Escape From Paradise
by CoyoteLoon
Summary: (Cluster Dawn, Part Two) Jenny and her classmates are captured, and taken as prisoners to the heart of the Cluster itself - Cluster Prime. Can Jenny and Drew avoid assimilation, and lead an escape back to Earth? Will they even want to? (complete)
1. Field Trip

All of the characters from "My Life as a Teenage Robot" belong to Rob Renzetti, the dudes from Frederator Studios, and Nickelodeon. The character of Drew Nabholtz, however, is my creation. He's a student at Tremorton High who was turned from a human into an android by Cluster nanotechnology (back in my first fic, "Android Scam.") Other original characters will be introduced in future chapters.

Eighty-plus reviews for Part One of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy, "Betrayal From Within". _Holy schnikey_ – you guys rock! Even if you haven't read it yet, you can probably follow the events in this story without too much trouble. Again, some fair warning on length: "Betrayal" wound up at just over 40K words, about what I expected. This story will likely be in excess of fifteen chapters, and 65K words. Eeep! I'll try to make it worth your time.

This story probably won't get finished before new episodes of MLaaTR begin airing. For the sake of argument, assume that this story takes place before the start of Season Two. Hopefully, there won't be anything in the new episodes that messes up the plot. And now, our feature presentation:

* * *

ESCAPE FROM PARADISE

Part Two of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter One – Field Trip

* * *

The yellow school bus idled in front of Tremorton High's main entrance, as the kids made their way up the stairs at a deliberately leisurely pace. Mrs. Robinson impatiently waved them along, shouting her voice raw with instructions to take up every available seat. The students chuckled with laughter at the middle-aged history teacher, watching her bark orders and direct traffic with tremendous self-importance. But mostly the class was enjoying the unexpected bonus of an impromptu field trip. No doubt a morning at the Tremorton Museum of Natural History would be boring beyond belief; but if it got them out of school for a few hours, then for today at least, everyone was a history buff.

The bus was about two-thirds full as Tamika and Ashley, two of the more attractive girls in the class, made their way down the aisle, giggling over the morning's gossip. Normally, the two friends would look for an empty seat to share, but Ashley spotted an even better opening: a pair of seats one behind the other, next to a couple of cute guys who were talking amongst themselves. They both recognized the red-headed boy; it seemed like everyone in school knew who Brad was. But neither of them could put a name to the dark-haired guy he was talking to.

"Hey there, Brad," laughed Ashley, as she plopped herself down on the seat next to him. "Ready for a morning of history, culture, and goofing off?'

"Naw, I was looking forward to Mrs. R's riveting, hour-long lesson on the Boer War," Brad laughed back. "Which, surprisingly enough, has absolutely nothing to do with wild pigs. Hey Ash, nothing personal, but I was saving that seat for …"

"Like, who's your new friend, Brad?" interrupted Tamika, sliding into the seat next to the dark-haired boy. After a quick once-over, the girls exchanged a nonverbal evaluation: _not too shabby_. Tamika smoothed out her bright teal skirt, and gave him a pleasant smile. "I thought I like, totally knew everyone in the class. So, like, have you ever been to the natural history museum before?"

He gave her a nervous smile, and seemed a little caught off guard. "Umm … only once," he chuckled, "but they threw me out when I asked them where _unnatural history_ section was." That got a laugh out of the girls, and Brad casually flashed him a big thumbs-up. "So, Tamika, I guess Robinson wants us to write up a three-page report on the museum for tomorrow. If you're … y'know, not doing anything after school, maybe we could head over to Coffee By Alex and …"

"Like, that would be _so awesome_ … hey … like, wait a minute." Just as she'd gotten comfortable in her seat, she noticed something familiar about his face. Tamika gave him a suspicious look, and startled him by reaching over to grab his hand …

Then she stuck her tongue out in disgust, and rapped on the back of the boy's wrist, making a loud _clang_ that echoed through the bus. He was made of _metal_. "Aw, _Drew!_ You shape shifting weirdo! Eww, eww, eww, like … disgusting, much!"

"Oh great, so you're what … _disguising_ yourself now?" sneered Ashley. "So you can stalk all the girls like some gooey creep? Fr-r-r-r-reak show!"

He squirmed nervously in his seat, and a shimmering wave of distortion ran over his skin, covering him from head to toe. The trillions of nanobots that made up Drew's malleable android body reverted to their default appearance; in less than a second, flesh tones and clothing faded away, to be replaced by a mix of grays and silvers, highlighted by thin, green crooked stripes. He raised his hands defensively. "Whoa, _whoa!_ I'm not trying to _stalk_ anyone! _Sheesh_ … I was just trying out a different look, okay? I just felt like trying to blend in to the crowd today!"

"Like, what-_ever_, Pudding Boy," snickered Tamika. The girls left for another empty seat, exchanging creative facial gestures to express their degree of revulsion. Students burst into raucous laughter, enjoying Drew's embarrassment. A few wadded-up pieces of scrap paper sailed through the noisy chaos, and ricocheted off the back of Drew's head.

He slumped onto the seatback in front of him, growling up at Brad's easy-going smile. "Hey, Drew, you should try out a different look," he said, mocking Brad's voice. "Go ahead, just talk to her! What's the worst that can happen? Yeah … that's some real five-star advice there, pal."

"Oh, come on," laughed Brad, consoling him with a pat on the head. "That's _almost_ not the worst crash and burn I've seen this month. Hey, look at it this way, she came over and sat down next to you! And you got her to laugh – _most_ impressive, by the way. You were doing great!"

"Right up to the part where she fled in horror," grumbled the teenage android.

"Ah, don't let it get to you," said Brad, smoothing out the wrinkles in his black sleeveless vest. "That was just two girls out of the whole school. Remember, there are plenty of fish in the sea!"

Drew looked up with a _gimme-a-break_ expression on his face. "I can't help but notice that – the guys who say _not to worry_ about girls, are usually the ones who have girls throwing themselves at them."

"Oh, _pffft_," snorted Brad. "Yeah, I wish! I don't have girls throwing themselves at me."

"Hey Brad, heads up!" squealed an attractive blonde, as she bounced into the seat next to him. Chloe tossed her backpack into Brad's lap, and giggled at the look of surprise on his face.

Drew rolled his eyes. "You were _saying_."

Brad shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, technically, she threw the _backpack_ … not herself."

"Finally, old lady Robinson comes through for us," laughed Chloe, playfully kicking her legs in the air. "This lame-o last-minute field trip means no third period Math test! _Yessss!_ I desperately needed an extra night to study chapter twelve. Hey, Brad, you're doing pretty good in math. We should get together after school today, and cram for the test!"

Brad knew that Chloe wasn't the _least_ bit interested in cramming for the math test. She'd been flirting with him over the past couple of weeks; in fact, he knew that she wanted him to take her to the prom, which was now just over a week away. But the more he got to know Chloe, the more uncomfortable he felt around her. She was far more beautiful on the outside than she was on the inside. "Wow … uh, that would be great, Chloe … but I sort of already had plans for after school. Jenny and I were going to do our homework together. In fact, I'm sort of saving that seat for …"

"Oh, _her_ again," groaned Chloe, heaving her shoulders with a labored _sigh_. "Look, Brad, let me give you a little free advice. Everyone thinks you're a pretty cool guy. And it's even kind of cool that you hang with the robots – those _freaks_ are always good for a laugh. But you spend way too much time with them. People are beginning to talk."

She had been completely unaware that Drew was sitting behind them, until he waved a hand to grab her attention, giving her a sarcastic smile. "Aww, aren't I good for a laugh? Give me a second, and I'll turn myself into a rubber chicken."

"_Ewww_ … do you mind, weirdo?" she said with a huff. "We're trying to have a _private_ conversation. Why don't you go … absorb a trash can, or something."

Brad was stunned by Chloe's bluntness, but he quickly recovered, and his face burned red with anger. "Hey, you can't talk to my friend that way! And _who_ says I spend too much time …"

"Forget about it, Brad," sighed Drew, "there's a nice comfortable seat in the rear of the bus." He pulled himself to his feet, simply not in the mood to argue. Brad and Chloe were exchanging heated words, but when Brad realized that Drew was actually starting to walk towards the back, he tried to stop him. "Drew! Come back. You don't need to leave. She'll apologize!"

"Not _likely_," sneered Chloe. "I'm not going to apologize to a giant walking booger. He's just a robot, Brad! It's not like he has any _real feelings_."

Brad and Chloe's argument got lost in the background of shouted conversations and cruel laughter. He continued towards the back, passing kids who glared at him like he was a walking disease, and others who avoided eye contact, terrified that he might actually sit next to them. Brit and Tiff were sitting behind two of the jocks from the wrestling team; they snickered as he walked past, whispering plans amongst themselves. One of the wrestlers stood up and shouted in an obnoxious voice, "Hey, Pudding Boy! Don't forget your lunch!" Then he tossed a handful of empty soda cans at Drew, rattling them off the side of his head. Drew's shoulders sagged, as the bus erupted into laughter.

He dropped his metallic body into the duct-taped bench seat at the rear of the bus, feeling exhausted, even though it was just after nine in the morning. He was a little upset at himself for letting the kids' taunts get to him. After all, it was nothing he didn't hear every day of his life. But for some reason, Chloe's comment stuck at him. _It's not like he has any real feelings_. She hadn't even said it as an insult; she'd stated it as an obvious assumption of fact.

As the bus lurched into gear, Drew suddenly realized that he hadn't seen a certain robot girl onboard. The motor revved, and they started to roll away from the curb – when he heard a frantic voice cry out from the school's front doors. "Wait! Wait, hold up! Wait for me! I'm coming!"

Jenny bolted across the sidewalk and sprinted after the bus, waving to get the driver's attention as the students howled with laughter. Naturally, dozens of kids urged the bus driver to keep going, hoping to leave her behind; but Jenny had no trouble keeping up with them on her motorized wheels. Mrs. Robinson finally got the driver to stop and open the doors. Jenny leapt up the steps, fumbling with her backpack and pleading her case, as her teacher shook an annoyed finger at her. The argument broke up after a paper airplane ricocheted off of Jenny's pigtail. The history teacher tried in vain to restore order, as the bus heaved back into traffic. Its rocking motion forced Jenny to stagger down the aisle with a comical stride, all while suffering under another barrage of snide remarks and bottle cap projectiles.

She frowned as she passed Brad and Chloe's seat; he had an apologetic look on his face, but that didn't improve her mood. A few rows back, Sheldon was sitting with another class nerd, critiquing the latest issue of the Captain Crush comic book. He nearly crushed his seatmate, sliding over to make room for Jenny; but she sped past him, pretending not to notice his invitation. As they pulled onto the highway, the driver bellowed at her to _sit down now_. That started a new chorus of taunting, just as Jenny tried to sneak past Brit and Tiff; it only took one _tsk-tsk-tsk_ from Brit to make Jenny blush blue with embarrassment. After she stepped on the ketchup packet, her cheeks burned even brighter. A few awkward strides later, and withering under the laughter, she plopped herself down next to Drew.

"Welcome to the back of the bus," he said, with a tired face.

"Sorry I'm late," she growled, slumping back into her seat with a _whirr_ of her servos. "Not exactly the way I wanted to start my morning."

"What happened, Jen? Early mission?"

"No, I got to school in plenty of time, but I had some trouble with my locker." She took a deep breath, as if trying to keep her temper under control. "When I got to my locker this morning, somebody had written 'Property of Frankenstein' on it in black marker. Okay, that's annoying, but it's not what made me late. Apparently, someone thought it would be funny to put super glue on the combination lock."

Drew shook his head. "Nice."

"Okay, so all my stuff is trapped in my locker, right? I figure I'm going to be late for class. So I rip open my locker to get my books out … and of course, who's walking behind me at that _exact moment_, but Vice Principal Raszinski." She sank lower into her seat, with a disgruntled look on her face. "He dragged me into his office, gave me a lecture, three days' detention … and he wants to set up a parent-teacher meeting with my mom, to discuss my 'aggressive behavior'." She sulked over the gross unfairness of it all.

"Yep," Drew groaned sarcastically, "it's great to have everything back to normal."

They moped in silence as the bus bounced along the highway, then exchanged a fatigued look to confirm that life, sometimes, just plain _sucked_. It was their first day back to school since the huge battle with the Omni-droid. It had nearly killed Drew, and had almost converted Jenny into a Cluster puppet. However, it was easier to repair the damage to their bodies than the damage to their reputations. The shape-shifting Omni-droid had convinced everyone that Jenny had gone rogue, and a lot of strong anti-robot sentiment had been unearthed at school. Even now that her innocence had been proven, nobody had really bothered to apologize to her. In fact, a lot of the usual harassment had taken on an even darker tone.

Jenny felt around the back of her metallic head, and pulled off a still-moist spitball. "Yeah, back to normal," she sighed. Then she mustered up her reserves of optimism, and tried to put a positive spin on things. "Well, now that we've taken care of that no-good Cluster creep, maybe everything will be nice and quiet today. I mean … sure, the day got off to a rocky start. But we get to spend a nice, quiet morning in a nice quiet museum … with a little luck, no calls from my mom … sail through an uneventful afternoon, and then you, me, and Brad can veg out at Mezmer's after school. We can make plans for the weekend!" Her face brightened with a big smile, and she playfully nudged Drew in the ribs. "Hey, _Tamika_ will probably be there too. Maybe you'll get a chance to … talk … to …"

The grimace on his face told her everything she needed to know. She shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. "Oh … um … you've already talked to her … haven't you? Sorry."

Drew waved off her concerns. "Don't worry about it, Jenny. It's my own fault; I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up in the first place."

"Oh, don't talk like that, Drew! You've just got to have a little faith in yourself. You're cute, and smart … and funny, and …" – then her voice trailed off, no longer able to keep up the stream of mindless platitudes. Her shoulders sunk, and her pigtails drooped with a pained _whirr_. "And you're a bizarro robot freak … just like _me_. Let's face it … we're just a couple of second-class citizens."

"I don't think we're actually considered to be _citizens_," he mumbled. "Legally, I think we're _appliances_." Neither or them laughed. They knew it wasn't a joke.

Jenny stared towards the front of the bus, listening to the mindless chatter and goofy laughter that she wanted so, so very desperately to be a part of. Part of her said to just be patient, don't make waves, give the students more time to get used to her. She'd memorized all of the _Teen Yak_ articles about blending into the crowd. She'd devoted considerable portions of her CPU time to calculating the best way to restore her popularity. She wanted to believe that the kids would accept her again, eventually. But a deeper part of her knew better. They had never _really_ accepted her in the first place. She didn't have any popularity to restore. No matter what she did, or how she acted, she was always going to be the odd one out.

_That's just the way things are always going to be_, she moaned to herself, _in a world of humans_.

Jenny looked out the window, letting her mind drift off as she watched the passing scenery, and the oncoming traffic. A small smile crept onto her face as she spotted the unmistakable profile of a Volkswagen Beetle … not an original one, of course, but one of the cute retro remakes that had been popular about ten years ago. "Punch buggy yellow," she giggled, balling her hand into a fist …

When to her surprise, the yellow Beetle slammed hard on its brakes, nearly swerving out of control as it came to a stop. A red station wagon coming up behind it followed suit, turning hard to avoid the Beetle, sending up smoke from its tires as it slid sideways.

"That's weird," she said out loud, as she watched another pair of cars screech to an abrupt halt. As far as she could tell, they weren't avoiding any collisions, and there wasn't any debris or obstacles in the middle of the road. The students on the left side of the bus began to notice, and pressed their faces against the windows, hoping to see some real-life excitement on an otherwise boring field trip. They had no idea how much excitement they were about to get.

Now Jenny was growing genuinely puzzled, as she watched three lanes of oncoming cars screech and swerve to a halt, a growing traffic clog made worse by dozens of two- and three-car collisions. Fortunately, the accidents were only fender benders, but if things kept up like this, somebody was bound to get hurt. "It doesn't make any sense," she said, watching a sports car rear-end a beige van. "Everyone on the highway has lost their mind. It's like they're … _panicking_. Maybe I should check it out …"

Drew leaned over to watch the spectacle, shaking his head at the idiots who had suddenly forgotten how to drive. Then he noticed that most of those idiots were staring, dumbstruck, straight ahead of themselves. Curious, he looked out the back window of the bus, to see what they were staring at …

"Holy _crap_!" He grabbed Jenny by the shoulder and shook, _hard_. "Jenny, behind us! Look behind …"

Then the bus plunged into darkness.

A few shouts rang out in surprise, and Jenny was puzzled too; but Drew knew what had happened. A shadow had fallen over the school bus. A very _large_ shadow. A howling whine rolled over them …

The entire bus shook with a deafening metallic crash, and rocked up and down on its springs as if a building had been dropped on it. Now the excited chatter of the students was replaced by ear-splitting shrieks of terror. The bus shook again, then lurched upwards with alarming force, catching everyone unprepared. Students were tossed onto the floor, against the ceiling, and into each other. Jenny bounced hard off of the side window, and grabbed a handrail to steady herself from the wild rocking motion. Her emergency world-saving software kicked into gear, and she briefly wondered if Tremorton was being struck by some apocalyptic earthquake …

Until she looked out the window, and realized that they were _airborne_.

Silver-green cables flowed out of Drew's body, wrapping around seatbacks and handrails to steady himself, as the bus pitched like a bucking bronco. "Jenny, there's something above us! Something _huge_!"

She punched out the back window, and telescoped her neck sections to stretch her head out for a better view. Amazingly enough, the bus was up in the air … at least two thousand feet up, and climbing quickly. Puffy white clouds were visible through the side windows. She turned her eyes upwards … and could barely believe what she saw.

An alien spaceship was hovering directly over the bus. Jenny ran its silhouette through her recognition software, but she knew what the answer was going to be. The ship's rounded hull and cockpit, and the six crooked extensions jutting out from its sides, gave it the appearance of a giant ladybug. It was a Cluster light cruiser, almost two hundred feet long, and it was _holding on_ to the school bus. A huge section of the ship's underside had opened up, and a long metal cable stretched down from the belly of the cargo bay, ending in massive four-pronged claw which dug into the roof of the bus. Jenny quickly pieced together what had happened. This Cluster spaceship had come out of nowhere, sneaked up on the bus from behind … and had plucked it right off the highway.

The ship loomed larger and larger above her. She heard the high-pitched shriek of powerful motors, and realized that the entire school bus was being winched right into the cruiser's cargo bay. She probably could have cut through the cable, and carried the bus and the kids back to safety – but there wasn't going to be enough time. They were almost inside. She quickly reeled her head back into the bus, narrowly avoiding the edge of the cruiser's hull.

"It's the Cluster!" she shouted in frustration. "What _is it_ with these guys?!? We just finished kicking their butts yesterday! Can somebody say _obsessed_?"

"Dang it, Jenny, do you owe them _money_ or something?" Drew braced himself while the bus shuddered violently one last time, and the mammoth winching motors came to a stop.

The circular opening in the floor sealed itself, as eight triangular doors rotated into each other like spiraling teeth. As they slammed shut, dozens of metallic _clangs_ echoed back and forth in every direction, confirming that they were now trapped inside of a giant compartment. Still in the grip of the powerful claw, the school bus gently oscillated like a lazy pendulum, suspended a few feet above the cargo bay's metallic deck plates. The high school students gazed out the windows in a state of shock. What they saw did nothing to soothe their fears. Bright lights illuminated the interior of a large, dome-shaped room, its walls lined with struts and pipes. Twenty robotic solider-drones surrounded the school bus, each bearing a hideous likeness to a metallic cockroach. Extra robotic limbs were deployed from their shoulders, pointing dangerous-looking laser guns directly at the bus.

A nasty snarl came over Jenny's face, and she tensed her hands into a pair of angry fists. "These bozos really, _really_ picked the wrong day to mess with me. I am SO not in the mood for this!"

The teenage superhero blasted out of the bus like a bolt of lightning, and deployed a giant mallet from her right arm. It wasn't her most dangerous weapon, but it was oh-so-satisfying to use. The olive-green drone she was flying towards managed to get off one badly aimed laser blast, before the hammer wheeled through the air and came down on its head like a falling mountain. Without missing a beat, Jenny's legs went through a rapid-fire transformation, turning her lower body into a nasty-looking toothed wheel, like a giant robotic pizza cutter. Dodging another pair of lasers, she tore into a hapless yellow roach-drone, shredding through its metallic hide as if it were made of newspaper.

Drew's body shimmered with waves of silver-green, and he flowed himself up to the edge of the bus's rear window. "You know, I'm in a pretty _crappy mood_, too." He flung himself towards a rust-colored drone, and his arms oozed and stretched out into a pair of long, curved scythes. His malleable body twisted through the air, avoiding laser fire, then he landed behind the cockroach, wrapping his bladed arms around its barrel-shaped torso. With a quick pair of _schwicks_, he flung his blades apart, neatly slicing the Cluster drone into three pieces.

Arcing his fluid body through the air, he avoided another pair of attacking drones, and landed a few feet away from Jenny, who had deployed a pair of circular saw blades from her wrists. They spun up to speed with an ear-piercing _screech_, and she struck an aggressive pose, ready to strike …

"Surrender right now, both of you!" bellowed a deep, rich voice.

With a low-pitched _hum_ of servo motors, a twelve-foot tall Cluster warrior stepped out of the shadows. His powerful chassis was decorated with drab shades of military green, and there was a confidence in his stride that bordered on cockiness. His scheming eyes grinned evilly as he flashed a smile at the teenage robots. "XJ-9 … so we finally meet again, face-to-face! And I see you've brought along a little friend this time. So much the better."

"_Smytus!?!_" growled Jenny. "You expect us to surrender to _you_, and twenty bug-stooges? _Pffft!_ Tell you what – let us go _right now_, and _maybe_ I won't slice you into a million pieces! I've got better things to do today than mess around with you. We're supposed to be at the museum in ten minutes!"

"Ah, right, that would be for your little _field trip_," he chortled. "Oops – sorry – I mean your _phony_ field trip. The one that _I_ set up, when I phoned your history teacher earlier this morning." He thoroughly enjoyed the look of surprise on the robot girl's face.

"_What?!?_" she gasped. _This is all a big set-up?_ "You big gap-toothed doofus … haven't you got anything better to do than play practical jokes? Well, it'll take more than some stupid trick to defeat me!"

"Foolish XJ-9! I don't need to defeat you," he grinned. "You're about to give up."

"Give up?!?" She gave him a sarcastic smirk. "To a _loser_ like you? Not likely!"

"I guess I'll just have to _persuade_ you, then." He raised his clawed hand, signaling his crew.

Four cannon barrels dropped from the ceiling, and fired long steel cables towards the school bus. In seconds, the cables wound around the bus, coiling over the roof and under the chassis, enveloping it in a loose cocoon of steel. Now none of the kids trapped inside could escape through the door or the windows – but that wasn't the main purpose of the cable. Jenny heard a new set of sounds whine to life from the roof of the cargo bay – the hum of electrical power generators. She looked up … and to her horror, realized that each of the long steel cables wrapped around the bus was connected to a high voltage power line, crackling with electricity. A terrible feeling started to form in her processors.

"There is more than enough power in those generators to reduce your little mammal-friends to smoking piles of ash," grinned Smytus. "You – and that silvery pile of goop – have exactly fifteen seconds to surrender, or we throw the switch. Attack any of my roach-drones, and we throw the switch. Move a servo, and we throw the switch. You now have … ten seconds."

She gasped with dread, realizing the seriousness of the threat to the students. Her tactical software gave only a 2.3 percent chance of a successful rescue. The Cluster may have had no regard for human life, but she couldn't let anything happen to her classmates – no matter how they treated her. And Smytus _knew_ that, the rotten jerk … "You big creep! _Let them go!_"

"Five seconds, XJ-9," chuckled Smytus. He knew he had the upper hand.

The students pounded desperately on the windows of bus, shouting for help. _Brad's in there …_

Drew gulped hard, and she could see the fear in his face. "Jenny, what do we do?" he asked.

"We … we surrender," she stammered, wincing in shame and disbelief.

They retracted their weapons, and Smytus enjoyed a hearty laugh as his remaining roach-drones encircled the two robot teens, and herded them towards a corner of the cargo bay. The Commander's massive chest threatened to explode with arrogant pride. "Our mission is completed … and I, Smytus, Cluster Champion, stand victorious once again! Drones, secure the prisoners and notify Queen Vexus of my triumph. Prepare the ship for the jump to hyperspace!"

Two roaches prodded Drew towards a small yellow containment barrel, which hummed with a powerful magnetic force field. Four roach-drones dragged Jenny towards a metallic arch, fitted with ultra-strong manacles designed to lock onto her hands and feet. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she shouted. "Look, we surrendered! Take the kids back to the school and let them go!"

"Hey, I'm on a schedule here!" Smytus pointed to a monitor on the wall, which clearly showed the crisp blue curvature of the Earth against the blackness of space. "See, we've already left Earth orbit! I'm not turning this starship around for anyone. Besides … with your foolish sentimentality for humans, I think they'll make a dandy little insurance policy, just to make sure you behave yourself on the trip. And we can always find a use for humans on the homeworld."

"The homeworld?" Terror seized her circuits. _No … he can't mean …_

"Navigation!" bellowed Smytus. "Set course for Cluster Prime."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Two / Seven Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	2. Into the Belly of the Beast

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Two – Into the Belly of the Beast

* * *

Jenny tried to wiggle the fingers on her left hand, desperately looking for a little freedom of movement – her aching servos had been held motionless for almost four hours now. But the customized manacles that locked her in a helpless spread-eagle stance wouldn't budge. Every attempt to break free from her bonds was punished with a powerful electric shock that left her wires sizzling. A signal-disruptor clamped to her head prevented her from deploying any weapons or rockets, or even her chest monitor. Her anxiety grew with every passing minute; there had to be some way to escape; there had to be something they had overlooked. Suddenly it came to her – _her eyes_! She could still move her eyes! Jenny focused on the ultra-strong shackle that enclosed her right arm, activated her laser eye-beams …

And shuddered with violent spasms, as jarring bolts of electricity shook her body. She routed more power to her eyes and howled in agony, feeling the short circuits crackling in her wiring, until she finally gave up and deactivated her eye-beams. The shocks stopped, and she dropped her head in defeat.

"Do yourself a favor, girlie, and just relax," chuckled the short, robotic scientist. "You'd think that after getting zapped for like, the zillionth time, it would start to sink in! I designed those restraints just for you, and you're not going _anywhere_ … trust me."

"Oh yeah?" she growled, her face burning with fury. "Last time I saw you, you were feeling pretty sure of yourself, too. And then your plans messed up big-time. In fact, I bet the Omni-droid was one of your sick little projects – wasn't he? Guess that makes you oh-for-two, _Stanley_."

"Aw, you remember me, after all these months!" smirked the egg-shaped genius-bot. "Isn't that nice – look, I'm all _verklempt_ over here. And while I'd just _love_ to chat about old times … I'm really more interested in your syrupy little friend at the moment." He rummaged around in an equipment locker with one of his six spindly arms, and pulled out something that looked like a small thermos. Then he wheeled over to the small yellow barrel next to Jenny.

The sides were transparent, revealing a shapeless silver-green blob that swirled inside the magnetic bottle with a gurgling hum. That blob, amazingly, was her friend Drew; but there'd been no word from him since he poured himself inside, hours ago. Stanley plugged his thermos into the top of the barrel, and pushed a few buttons. Then the barrel shuddered with a faint vibration, and an eerie howl reverberated through the cargo bay. To Jenny, it sounded like a scream for help. "What are you doing to him?" she shouted angrily. "Stop it! Stop it, you're hurting him!"

"Oh, I'm just taking a little sample for later. I'm not hurting him … _probably_." Stanley removed the thermos, and cradled it in his hands with a look of triumph on his face. "I've never fully understood how your little human friend was changed into an android, and I've never been able to duplicate it in the lab. But with enough experimentation, I'll discover how the nanobots evolved a stable mind of their own. Of course … _heh-heh_ … that could take months. Maybe even years."

"Nanobots," snorted Smytus, with condescension dripping from his voice. "Play with your microscopic toys if you wish – but this mission just proves that there is no substitute for a true warrior!" The towering insectoid commander leaned forward, giving Jenny a sarcastic smile. "Ah, XJ-9 … I must say, you make a very lovely trophy. I always knew that Smytus, Destroyer of Worlds, would be the one to defeat you in battle! Although I have to admit, even I didn't expect it to be so easy. No doubt, Queen Vexus will issue a Royal Proclamation, declaring me the greatest Cluster champion of all time!"

"Yeah, you're a real _war hero_," Jenny sneered back at him. "_Battle?_ You _courageously_ kidnapped a busload of high school students and held them hostage!"

"Students? Oh, right … the _mammals_." Smytus gestured to a rust-red drone, which scurried up to him and snapped a salute. "Drone, report! Have you finished preparing the _primates_ for arrival?"

"Yes, Commander … there is one _small_ problem, though." The drone smiled nervously. "One of them keeps saying that he needs to use a … _toilet_? Umm … any idea what that means?"

"Oh, for the love of …." Smytus snorted with disgust at the pathetic human teenagers. They were arranged in neat rows, sitting on the cold, uncomfortable deck plating, whimpering in fear. Heavy collars were fastened around their necks, which were chained together to form one long string of prisoners. Smytus' fists crackled with pale green energy. "You mean they're not _housebroken_? So help me, if any of them makes a mess in my starship … drone, go find me a rolled-up newspaper!"

Then the entire ship lurched slightly, and the background hum of the engines began to wane a little. The commander's smile returned. "Never mind, drone. The ship has dropped from hyperspace … we'll be on the ground in minutes. Activate the viewscreen!" The wall monitor flickered back to life, displaying the perfect inky blackness of normal space …

And a large copper-colored planet, surrounded by a jagged orange ring that glistened in the light of a red sun. A planet devoid of oceans or forests, without deserts or snowcaps; its surface was highlighted not by mountains or rivers, but by long straight seams, as if it had been cast in pieces and assembled in some cosmic factory. Even the bands of cloud that drifted across its surface seemed spaced with artificial regularity. The outlines of cities both great and small were visible, interconnected with a web of tunnels, rails, and roadways; matching patterns of light lit up the night side, their perfect geometric shapes standing out against the stars. No part of the astonishing world was left untouched by technology.

"Cluster Prime, in all its glory," Smytus grinned to his prisoners. "Your new home." Then he headed for the bridge, leaving echoes of maniacal laughter ringing through the cargo bay.

A lump formed in Jenny's hydraulics as she watched the iron planet grow closer. She could barely believe it – she was heading for the very center of the evil Cluster Empire, from which none had ever escaped. Her classmates were still in a state of shock. Brad made eye contact, and tried to flash a reassuring smile; but she could see the fear in his eyes. She put on a brave face and smiled back; she'd never let these Cluster jerks see it, but she was scared too. In fact, as they passed the planet's artificial ring, with thousands of spaceships flitting about it, Jenny realized that she'd never been this scared before in her life.

* * *

The light cruiser broke through a thin layer of clouds, soaring over a metallic terrain of steel and rust, chrome and copper. It flew onwards towards the sprawling military base, passing dozens of other scout-ships and star-cruisers, and hovercraft circling the skies on vigilant patrol. Battleship-gray buildings spread for miles in every direction, interconnected with a tangle of pipelines and transport tubes. Honeycombs of ten-story hexagons, home to millions of soldier drones, stood next to perfect rows of fortified armories, where countless weapons of untold destructive power were stored. Five fusion reactor buildings rose like giant silos to the north, powering the base and its dozens of laser gun emplacements. Mile-high towers topped with huge scanning dishes loomed skyward from the four corners of the base; from their sides hung colossal green-and-red banners with the Cluster emblem, flapping majestically in the wind. Tunnels and rail-tubes spread off in every direction of the compass, connecting the base to the rest of the planet. And dominating the landscape was an enormous concrete tarmac, lined with rows of hangars, which housed hundreds of starships from the Royal Cluster War Fleet. And everywhere, thousands and thousands of drones marched about in complex but orderly fashion, tending to the duties of the empire.

This was Fort Zero-One, located outside the towering spires of the Cluster capital, visible on the horizon. This was the largest military installation on Cluster Prime, home port of the mighty Cluster War Fleet, the most unstoppable military force in the known universe. And like the empire it served, the fleet was ever growing. On the southwest corner of the landing tarmac, hundreds of cranes surrounded twenty leviathan vessels under construction in the shipyards. Each ship was larger than an aircraft carrier, with a domed green hull that reached six hundred feet into the air. The light cruiser seemed like a tiny beetle in comparison as it drifted overhead, heading for the flashing lights of its assigned landing pad.

It slowed to a hover, and its six leg-booms folded up and outwards. As the cruiser gently settled down on its anti-gravity engines, Smytus' face smirked with arrogance from the windows of his bridge. A welcome party had been assembled for his triumphant arrival. Hundreds of roach-drones and officers stood at attention in precise columns, along with several of his fellow Commanders. And just off the landing pad sat a luxurious stretch black hovercar, trimmed with the colors of the Cluster flag, and adorned with small banners bearing the royal coat of arms. A telescoping robotic arm unrolled a red carpet from the side of the hovercar, and its door smoothly swung open …

And out stepped the wasp-like form of Queen Vexus, looking composed and regal, with an extremely pleased expression on her face. She glided towards the landing pad, and the roach-drones and fleet officers snapped rigidly to attention. The officers joined her at the back of the light cruiser, as its aft doors swung open to deploy a loading ramp. And at the top of the ramp stood Smytus, grinning like a Chesire Cat, insincerely playing the part of humble servant.

"We bring you greetings and warm welcome, Commander Smytus." Vexus was a picture of poise, yet even she could not completely mask her glee at the moment. "From your transmission, I understand that congratulations are in order."

"Most gracious of you, Your Majesty," blathered Smytus, sweeping his arm with an overdramatic bow. "Three days ago, I promised that I would capture XJ-9 for you. And as you can see, Your Majesty … I have made good on my promise."

Two roach-drones pushed Jenny, locked in her massive arch-shaped restraint, down the loading ramp and onto the tarmac. She gasped as she saw the hundreds of Cluster robots surrounding her, and was stuck speechless by the awesome size and scope of the military base. An overwhelming feeling of hopelessness came over her … then she saw Vexus standing smugly only a few feet away. The vanquished heroine put on a stubborn scowl, and glared at the queen with hatred in her eyes.

Vexus strolled over to inspect the thick, U-shaped frame that held Jenny motionless, then gave her a mocking smile. "Nice and comfy, are we, dear?" A soft cackle wafted up from her throat. "Now see, if you had simply accepted my gracious invitation to join the Cluster in the first place, we wouldn't have had to resort to such unpleasantness. I suppose that's always the way it is with teenagers … they're determined to do things the hard way."

The robot queen leaned closer, and caressed Jenny's cheek with her twisted, spidery fingers; Jenny winced with disgust, and tried in vain to pull her face away. "None can stand against the Cluster, Jennifer," said Vexus, in a low, menacing voice. "None can stand against _me_. Sooner or later, I always get what I want. And now, my girl, I've finally got _you_. By the end of the day, you will be swearing eternal loyalty to the Cluster. And you will have no greater desire than to _obey me_."

"Dream on," hissed Jenny, trying to sound brave in spite of her shaking voice. "The only _desire_ I have is to pull those stupid eyelashes off of your face. I said I would never join the Cluster, and I _mean it_."

Vexus pinched Jenny's cheek. "Ha, ha, ha … oh, such delightful impudence! Really, Jenny dear, I don't understand what you're so upset about. It's not every robot that gets a chance to become queen of an entire planet, with armies at her command, and thousands of human slaves tending to her every need. Of course, there's the small matter of a visit to the lab for an … _attitude adjustment_, before that can happen. Oh, trust me … once your free will is gone, you won't even miss it."

As Jenny shivered over the thought of having her free will removed, Stanley led another pair of roach-drones down the loading ramp, carrying a small yellow barrel between them. Vexus gestured for them to stop, and bent down to peer into the transparent side of the container. A shapeless mass of silver-green nanobots swirled lazily about inside, oozing and gurgling like a lava lamp.

"The rogue experiment," frowned the queen, with a hint of revulsion. "Commander, I thought I gave you orders to have this thing annihilated."

The reprimand caught Smytus by surprise, and he stammered awkwardly. "Er … well, Your Majesty, I thought you might want the pleasure of destroying him yourself …"

But Stanley interrupted, rolling forward to plead his case. "I beg your forgiveness, oh Mighty Queen, but after we captured it undamaged along with XJ-9, I thought it would be useful for my research! You know, with the experiments, and the probing, and the dissecting …"

Vexus rubbed her chin, and an evil smile spread across her cruel face. She gazed into the magnetic bottle, and the blob responded by pinching off a silvery tendril towards her. "So, you _can_ see and hear me in there – good," she cackled. "Did you think you could attack me, fool, and not pay the price? I _could_ simply have this container dropped into a recycling furnace … and enjoy the sound of your screams, as you slowly melted away into nothing. Ah, but that would all be over too quickly. No, now that I think about it … I _like_ the idea of keeping you locked in there, trapped in a tiny prison for the rest of your life. I wonder … how long it will take a swarm of nanobots to go completely insane?"

The barrel suddenly lurched forward, as Drew's body thrashed about frantically in his magnetic cage. The roach-drones struggled to keep their balance, and Vexus rocked with spine-chilling laughter, thoroughly enjoying the nano-droid's panic attack. "Yes, Stanley, you may _keep_ the abomination for your little experiments. Do try to make them as unpleasant as possible, will you?"

Then she returned her attention to Jenny. "But do not forget your first priority. I want you to take XJ-9 with you back to your laboratory – she's to be reprogrammed and ready for her public debut at the Royal Festival tomorrow. I'm _sure_ she'll be a big hit with the adoring public, once we make her presentable ..." She rubbed a spot of dirt from Jenny's pigtail, taunting her with an arrogant smile …

"Noooo!" cried a nasally voice. "Monster! Don't you lay a hand on her, you!"

The disturbance came from Jenny's classmates as they were led down the loading ramp by a pair of drones, tugging them by their chains as if they were livestock. Most of the teenagers simply trudged along; but one gangly, pasty-faced geek's fear was overcome by concern for his beloved. Sheldon strained against his collar, and shook a finger at the startled robot queen. "You leave Jenny alone! She'll never join you – she's too good for you!"

Brad clutched frantically at his own collar; whenever Sheldon lunged wildly, the tension in the chain choked him. "Sheldon, cool it! Be quiet, you're just going to get yourself hurt! _Glacck_ … and get the rest of us hurt, too!"

Then Brad managed to catch Jenny's eye, and he did what he always did … he flashed her a big smile. Even in chains, being marched off to the unknown, he was trying to cheer her up. "Hey, Jen, look at it this way … it could be worse! We could be stuck in fourth period English right now, listening to Smelhaus read us bad poetry!"

Jenny actually laughed … but only for a moment. The sight of Brad as a prisoner was one of the most horrible things she'd ever seen in her life. Even as they smiled at each other across the landing pad, the pain in their eyes silently conceded that this might be the last time either of them ever saw the other, for the rest of their lives. And Jenny felt a deeper pain still; she knew that she was responsible for getting him into this mess. "Brad, hang on!" she shouted. "Everyone, just hang on! It's going to be okay! We're going to get out of this!" She blinked hard, not quick enough to keep a tear from running down her cheek. She wondered if her words of reassurance sounded as hollow to her classmates as they did to her.

Queen Vexus watched the little episode transpire with a sneer on her face. "Hmmph. Not a particularly impressive lot, are they? A few years of hard labor will do wonders for them. But enough about that." She gestured for her robot chauffeur. "I'm so sorry to leave you now, dear, but I have so _many_ things to do. Big weekend planned … for _both_ of us! And you know how it is, if you fall behind schedule, it's just so hard to catch up. I'll drop by for a visit later tonight." Her eyes narrowed, and glowed an ominous yellow. "I'm certain that you'll be in a much more … _agreeable_ mood by then."

As the robot queen enjoyed a hearty laugh in her royal hovercar, Jenny recklessly strained in her bonds one more time, earning another nasty jolt of electricity. She slumped in her restraints, physically and emotionally exhausted, and out of ideas. Her pigtails drooped with grief, as Smytus ordered his roach-drones to move her to the transport tunnels. She was going off to be assimilated. Vexus had won.

* * *

The streamlined train car quickly picked up speed as it pulled away from Fort Zero-One's central station, and turned onto a spur towards an eastbound tunnel, which led to the Cluster capital just a few miles away. It hovered a few inches above a line of superconducting magnets, smoothly accelerating to over two hundred miles per hour. Then it plunged into the tunnel with a shriek of rushing air, pitched downwards, and in seconds was cruising along silently, deep beneath the surface of the planet. In a matter of minutes, they would arrive at the research complex underneath Queen Vexus' palace.

Smytus leaned back in his luxuriously padded couch, and pressed a button to deploy a footrest. He reviewed a roach-drone's mission report with one claw, and swirled a martini glass of sparkling anti-freeze with the other. He was extremely pleased with himself right now; his status in the empire was on the way up, and he was back in the good graces of the queen. He glanced towards the back of the train car, where Jenny's platform stood. She was still tightly secured in her oppressive restraints, attached to the heavy U-shaped arch, with four roach-drones standing guard beside her. Another six drones accompanied Smytus for the journey; he enjoyed having underlings around to give orders to.

"A toast … to you, XJ-9," gloated Smytus. "Long may you reign over the planet Earth … soon to be the newest addition to the Great Cluster Empire!"

Jenny twisted in the massive shackles, still desperately trying to find a weakness in their design. She shot a hateful look at Smytus. "A toast, huh? If I wasn't stuck in this thing, _you'd_ be toast, pal."

"My goodness, so snippy for a young lady!" laughed Stanley, as he scanned the yellow containment barrel. "And she's going to be royalty? Reprogramming her to obedient and loyal will be no problem, but _oy_, I'm going to need a week to rewrite the subroutine that handles her manners!"

She writhed in agony and frustration as the robots burst into sadistic laughter. A chill ran through her circuits; she wondered what reprogramming would feel like. Her imagination conjured up horrific images of snake-like probes plugging themselves into her body, while the scientist's creepy little hands tinkered around inside her head with a soldering iron. _I wonder if I'll even feel it happening …_ Then she turned her attention to the yellow barrel sitting a few feet away, and felt a crushing dread for what was to become of her friend. "Y-you're not really going to leave Drew in there forever, are you?" she asked.

"Hey, he got on the queen's bad side," replied Stanley, shaking a finger at her. "Not a real smart thing to do. Trust me – I _know_. Besides, once I'm done experimenting on him in a year or so, I should be able to rewrite his software. Then he'll be nice and loyal, just like you! Won't that be nice?"

Smytus threw his arms in the air with a synthesized groan. "Oh, for Cog's sake! Scientist, you're wasting your time fooling around with nanobots." The Commander picked the yellow barrel up, held it in front of his face, and gave it a hard shake. "They look like something I'd fill a wall crack with! Hardly useful at all. Although, it does look kind of neat when you shake them like this." He shook the barrel again, laughing as the silver-green fluid spun into the shape of a donut.

Stanley folded his arms with a huff, while the roach-drones took the cue to laugh along with their commander. Jenny's cheeks boiled with rage as she watched Smytus shake the barrel harder and harder, making the nanobot sludge spin even faster. "Stop it, you big bully! Stop _tormenting_ him!!!"

But Smytus only shook the barrel even harder. The blob of nano-ooze turned into a silver-green blur, rotating so fast that a low-pitched hum began to build inside the speeding train car. Jenny was so furious at the pointless torture, and her inability to do anything about it, that she thought she would explode.

Stanley groaned. "All right, I think we've had our little fun, now why don't you put him down so …"

But Smytus didn't _look_ like he was having fun – in fact, panic was creeping onto his face. His arms were pumping back and forth like pistons. "I … can't … stop," he stuttered. "I'm … not … _doing_ … this!" Smytus grimaced in agony, and everyone realized that something was going on inside the barrel. It was Drew, spinning himself in circles at insanely high speed … making the barrel shake, like an unbalanced load in a washing machine. The hum from the barrel grew higher in pitch, and the vibration became even more violent. Smytus looked like his shoulders were going to come off … so he finally let go.

The vibrating barrel wrenched itself out of his hands like a wild animal. It fell to the floor with a sharp _clang_ … and took off like it had been shot out of a cannon. The roach-drones dove for cover, as the yellow missile ricocheted around the inside of the train car. Smytus winced as the barrel rang off his back, and knocked him off his couch. Jenny watched helplessly as Drew's container whizzed by her head. Stanley wheeled under a table, narrowly avoiding the high-speed projectile. The hum from the barrel was now a high-pitched shriek; the walls of the train were covered in dents, and all the windows were cracked …

"Don't worry! He can't break out!" shouted Stanley. "As long as the magnetic bottle …"

But Smytus wasn't listening to him. "Miserable nano-droid … try to make a fool out of me, will you? I'll slow you down, you little sludge-ball …" The commander's hand glowed with a crackling green energy, he took aim at the whirling dervish … and unloaded a series of laser blasts into the air.

His shots missed the target. The barrel recoiled off the far wall, smacked him square in the face, and bounced away again. Reeling from the blow, now Smytus was livid with aggravation. He powered up both fists and fired at the wildly ricocheting barrel, blasting windows, ceiling panels, two unfortunate drones … everything but the barrel itself. With a scream of frustration, he unloaded a powerful double-barreled blast at the barrel …

And hit the metallic restraint on Jenny's left arm, cracking it open.

With all the chaos of the speeding barrel and the laser blasts, it took Jenny a second to realize that she could finally move her left arm … and a little movement was all she needed. With a mighty heave, Jenny thrust her arm free, shattering the manacle into a dozen pieces. Next to go was the infernal headpiece which had brought her so much agony – she grinned with delight, as she ripped it off and hurled it to the floor of the train. Her left elbow cracked open, and she deployed her laser-limb …

Smytus finally knocked the barrel out of the air with an energy blast. Only then did he realize that Jenny was freeing herself. She fired one blue laser-bolt into a green roach-drone, and a second directly at Smytus himself. The giant Cluster warrior dove for the floor and picked up a horrified red drone, using him as a shield while his other hand charged up to maximum power. Smytus jumped to his feet and fired at Jenny, just as she got off another shot. Her laser-bolt ripped into the red drone's chest, and knocked Smytus off balance – forcing his maximum-energy blast to rip through the floor of the train.

The laser ripped a bank of super-magnets from the underside of the train. It grew unstable, wobbling from side to side, and began to tip off-balance. There was only inches of clearance between the belly of the train and the floor of the tunnel; the car grazed the concrete with a shower of sparks, then lunged over hard, and kicked violently into the air. It derailed completely, and suddenly it was tumbling end over end, smashing against the walls of the tunnel. The robots ricocheted about inside the car like ping-pong balls, completely out of control. Then the strain on the weakened body of the train became too great, and with the screech of failing metal, it snapped in half.

Jenny's world spun around in sickening circles as she was launched from the wreckage, and she rolled down the tunnel, still locked in her restraining harness. After a few seconds that felt like hours, she tilted over onto her back, and finally came to a stop. She tried to collect her senses - then heard another rattling sound, echoing towards her down the tunnel. The yellow barrel, with Drew still trapped inside, was rebounding off the walls like a runaway pinball. Jenny quickly stretched her arm out, deployed a giant basket from her wrist, and caught the barrel like a lacrosse player.

"Hang on, Drew," she panted, deploying a saw blade from her wrist. "I'll have you out in a …"

Her voice was cut off by the loud, piercing double-blast of a train horn.

Jenny raised her head to look further down the tunnel, and saw the glaring headlights of another bullet train, screaming directly towards her at terrific speed. The train wasn't slowing down; it couldn't have realized that an accident was blocking the tunnel just ahead. With renewed urgency, Jenny revved her saw blade to full power. In seconds, there was going to be a horrific collision in this tunnel. And she and Drew were going to be right in the middle of it.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Three / Seven Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	3. Welcome to Scenic Cluster Prime

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Three – Welcome to Scenic Cluster Prime

* * *

The train's horn blared faster and faster now, overpowering the wail of Jenny's saw blades as they ripped into the thick metal enclosure. Both of her arms were free, but her legs were still bound tightly to the heavy U-shaped harness, which was lying in the middle of the magnetic track. The yellow containment barrel that had imprisoned Drew now lay sawed neatly in half. Silvery-green syrup drizzled out of the barrel, forming a large pool of shiny molasses on the tunnel floor; but it just sat there, bubbling and oozing, showing no signs of life. Another horn blast, and the blinding glare of the train's headlights, brought her attention back to her own immediate problems.

She added the power of her eye-beams along with the saw blades, frustrated by the toughness of the metallic alloy. The restraint on her left leg was giving way. But she'd never free her right one in time …

Then she felt a measure of slack – and saw that the puddle of nanobots had spawned long floppy tentacles, which had wrapped themselves around the heavy casing. It grew soft and doughy, and turned a shimmering, silver-green color. She grinned with relief – Drew was all right, and he was eating the restraint on her right leg! With a surge of strength, she burst her left leg free. Then the bonds on her right leg dissolved into sludge, and the teenage heroine sprung to her feet, with only seconds to spare. She could see the terror on the robot's face in the onrushing train's windshield.

_Click-snap-whirr_. Her newly freed legs transformed into a huge drill, and screamed up to full speed. Jenny scooped Drew's doughy body into her arms, and ripped into the wall of the tunnel – just feeling the passing train nick the tip of her pigtail, as she carved her way through the rock. Seconds later, a deafening crash told her that the train had collided with the wreckage from the first accident, and Jenny decided that she'd had enough of tunnels for a while. She angled her body upwards, and began to climb towards the surface, and the unknown dangers that awaited them there. Chunks of rock and gravel fell back in her face, while she clutched the blob of silver taffy protectively in her arms. Jenny had no idea how far underground they were. She must have bored through two hundred feet of rock already …

Then a shaft of light struck her in the eyes, and moments later, they spilled out onto a hard concrete surface. Jenny rolled away from the freshly dug hole, and let Drew's body flow into a sticky blob a few feet away. Then she just flopped onto her back while her legs reverted to normal, and struggled to calm herself down. She was exhausted, and stunned … and terrified.

As her energy reserves recovered, she heard a welcome gurgling sound. The silver-green blob was oozing and stretching back into a humanoid figure. Tentacles sprang out, turning into arms and legs, and a head sprouted up, wearing a weary face. With a final shimmering wave through his body, Drew was back in android form, sitting on the ground next to Jenny, with his face buried in his hands. Then he slowly looked up at her, and the two robots exchanged a sigh of relief – for each other, and for themselves.

"I'm going to have nightmares about barrels for the rest of my life," he gasped. He looked around with darting, paranoid eyes. "Jenny, do you have any idea where we are?"

"Not really," she panted, still recuperating from her harrowing ordeal. "That tunnel went from the military base to Vexus' palace. So that means we're somewhere between the two … _gulp_ … probably right in the middle of the Cluster capital!"

"The Cluster capital?!?" The realization crashed down on him like a ton of bricks. "We're in the middle of the freakin' _capital of Cluster Prime_!?! Oh, we are _so dead_."

"Okay-okay-okay, relax!" babbled Jenny … not sounding very relaxed herself. "We've just got to stay cool, and make sure we don't run into any more Cluster goons."

"Right, on a planet with _billions_ of assimilated zombie robots," he said, sarcastically rolling his eyes. They got to their feet, and realized that they were inside some kind of building. Rows of shelves stretched off in every direction, loaded with boxes and containers of every imaginable size and shape. Conveyors and transport tubes hung from the ceiling, carrying boxes around to different parts of the room. The air was filled with the sounds of motion – and the _whirr_ of robotic servo motors. Jenny snuck a quick peek around a stack of crates, and saw dozens of robots walking back and forth amongst the shelves. "Oh no – this place is crawling with Cluster creeps!" she said, in a loud whisper. "This must be some kind of military storage warehouse, for all their evil weapons and junk. We've got to get out of here!"

"I've got more good news," Drew whispered back, with a look of panic on his face. "I can hear voices coming up from our escape tunnel. I think some of Smytus' little roach dudes are following us!"

"Oh, _perfect_," gulped Jenny, gnawing on her metallic fingers. The only door she could see was on the far side of the room; right now, it seemed to be a million miles away. "Okay, follow me and be quiet!"

The two teenagers followed one of the tall shelves to the side of the room, in hopes of sneaking out against the wall unnoticed. They sprinted from shelf to shelf, glancing down the aisles to make sure no-one was looking, edging ever closer to the exit. They were making good progress – but halfway to the door, three tall forklift-robots turned a corner and _clanked_ in their direction. Jenny grabbed Drew and dove behind a large round storage bin, clumsily knocking a pile of thin plastic packets onto the floor beside them. She prayed that the sudden motion hadn't been noticed.

She kept a nervous eye on the forklift-bots, mentally wishing they would just go away. Curious, Drew picked up one of the white packets and inspected it. "Jenny, these are _envelopes_," he whispered. "Check it out, it says … it says … 'Happy Birthday, Uncle Flexo?'"

"Wha?" She double-blinked in confusion, and grabbed the envelope from his hands …

"Halt, unauthorized units! You are in a _restricted area_!" The mechanically synthesized voice nearly scared them out of their wits. They had been discovered by a lanky bronze robot, who glared down at them menacingly with his single optical sensor. His double-jointed arm whined into motion, its servo motors buzzing madly as it reached out towards Jenny – and snatched the envelope away from her.

"If you are picking up a package," it bellowed, "you have to take a number, just like everyone else!"

Then the bronze robot pushed the stunned, and baffled, teenagers towards the exit. The door slid open, leading to a bright, pleasantly decorated room with … a _service counter_. Half a dozen robots stood patiently in line, holding boxes and packages of their own. A couple of them took notice of the teenage troublemakers, then turned their attention back to the cheerful robots working behind the counter. The walls were covered with colorful posters bearing catchy slogans. To his astonishment, Drew realized that they were … _advertisements_. "Empire Express," he read out loud. "Guaranteed overnight delivery anywhere in the Empire … or your money back? What the …"

"Uh … okay, so maybe this _isn't_ a military warehouse," said Jenny, scratching her head. In fact, she was taken aback by the sheer _normalcy_ of the place. And the robots weren't intimidating insectoid warriors; they were pleasant, ordinary folk, just going about their business.

"Aaah … They don't seem to be as … _zombie-ish_ as one might expect," stammered Drew, with a puzzled look on his face. He wandered across the carpeted floor, trying not to stare at the robot customers, towards a set of glass double-doors … and froze in place, with a look of amazement on his face.

Jenny chased after him … then she got to the glass, too. After a few seconds of stunned silence, they walked through the doors, into the outside air. And looked up.

"_Whoa_," she croaked, in a weak voice.

"Holy … _schnikey_," he gasped.

Skyscrapers soared hundreds of stories into the warm red sky, majestically towering over them like a stainless steel forest, shimmering with soft hues of green and blue, copper and gold. To their left, a dark obelisk rose towards the clouds, glistening like a polished black pearl; to their right was a graceful tower of intricate latticework, covered in tinted glass that made it glisten like a giant sapphire. Each building had an individual grace and design all its own; some loomed as symbols of might and power, others rose in fanciful swoops and curves that seemed more like works of art. Signs, billboards, and holograms were scattered over the faces of the buildings, flashing a dizzying array of messages that added even more vibrancy and color to the cityscape. Transport tubes and elevators ran up and down the sides of the towers, and high-level skyways connected them with their neighbors; there were streets and avenues down at ground level, but this was a city that used _all three_ available dimensions.

That was evident from the traffic. Hovercars, hover-trucks, hover-buses, hover-taxis … thousands of vehicles flew overhead, stacked in crisscrossing layers of aerial traffic every hundred feet or so. It seemed impossible that so many vehicles could fly safely in so many different directions at once, but the blizzard of cars flowed along with grace and efficiency, tracing hypnotic patterns through the skies with effortless ease. Some vehicles pulled up to the top floors of the skyscrapers, stopping at sky-high doorways to unload passengers. Dozens of monorails hummed between buildings along ribbons of airborne rail; some of the tracks were built into the sides of the towers themselves, to service their higher elevations. The city was a chaotic symphony of motion and activity.

And there were robots; robots in more sizes and shapes that Jenny had imagined could exist. Robots traveling alone, and in pairs, and in families with small robot children, even some with robotic pets. Humanoid robots walked along on two, three, or four legs; some robots rolled on wheels or treads; some hovered by with propellers or anti-grav generators. Tiny robots no bigger than a toaster whizzed past, zigzagging their way between pedestrians; hulking ten-foot loader-bots labored behind parked transports, moving cargo and supplies. Robots drove by overhead in hovercars and hover-buses. Robots zipped past on the monorail. Fat, thin, short, tall, round, cylindrical, boxy, streamlined … in every conceivable color. There were thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.

They gazed up at the Cluster capital, and the planetary ring that stretched from horizon to horizon, arcing magnificently over their heads as if a brass rainbow was holding up the sky. "Incredible," Jenny finally managed to say. "It's … it's _incredible_."

Then they were snapped from their trances by sounds of commotion coming from behind, back in the sorting room of Empire Express. Drew glanced back through the windows, then grabbed Jenny by the arm, pulling her down the sidewalk in a panic. "It's them! Smytus and his merry band of stooges! And they're talking to that bronze guy who kicked us out!"

That was all she needed to hear. Jenny took off in a sprint, dodging around annoyed robotic pedestrians, without a clue as to where she was running. Struggling to keep up with her, Drew glanced over his shoulder every few seconds to see if anyone was following them. The crowded sidewalk made for a frustratingly slow pace; then they came to an intersection, and just missed the crossing lights. Heavy cargo vehicles _whished_ by at high speed, kicking up faint whirlwinds of dust and smoke.

Jenny thought about using her pigtail-jets, then got a better idea. On the outside of the pewter-colored building behind them, she saw a large elevator capsule, resting at ground level. The electronic sign over the doors read "Express to 100th floor". They slipped in, just as the doors slid shut … and vaulted into the air on a magnetic rail, like they'd been fired out of a cannon. The speed caught Jenny by surprise, though it didn't seem to bother the other passengers at all. As the ground shrank away from them, she saw a group of robots roughly pushing their way along the sidewalk – and a telescopic zoom of her eyes confirmed that it _was_ Smytus and his team of roach-drones. Jenny nudged Drew in the ribs, and pointed down with a smile – seeing their pursuers shrink into a collection of dots filled them with a sense of relief.

The capsule decelerated quickly but smoothly, and opened onto a new level of walkways encircling the skyscraper, hundreds of feet above street level. The robot teens spilled out of the elevator, and merged with another busy stream of pedestrian traffic. They walked around the building's gleaming exterior, admiring a series of beautiful frescos molded into its walls. The path led to an elevated skywalk, which spanned the distance across the street, bridging two skyscrapers. Transparent panels in the skywalk's walls gave a spectacular view of the towering buildings that lined the street, stretching from the heavens to the earth. Rivers of flying cars sped past in both directions, above their heads and below their feet.

Still in a wondrous state of shock, Jenny had a sudden revelation, and a smile crept onto her face. Drew was staring out the skywalk windows like a little kid, and it took a few seconds to get his attention. "Look around us," she said. "Look at all these robots around us! What do you see?"

"A lot of them," he said. "I sort of figured there _would_ be, but it's still amazing …"

"No, no, no!" she grinned. "They're _ignoring_ us. We're just another pair of robots here … nobody's staring at us like we're a couple of freaks!"

She could see the light go on in his eyes, as he realized what she was saying. "We blend in," he smiled. "A six-foot robot girl, and a silver-green android boy … and we just _blend in_!"

The skywalk led to a huge, semi-circular balcony covered with artificial plants, crystal sculptures, and a spectacular fountain lit up with colored laser beams. The patterns painted on the water were _so_ beautiful, and Jenny wished that she could just stop and watch – but constant movement was their best defense. Besides, most of the robots were heading for a wide row of sliding glass doors. Over the doors was an elaborate sign, made of wrought iron, which read "Welcome to the Capital Galleria."

"No … _way_," said Jenny, with excitement bubbling in her voice. She bolted through the doors so quickly that Drew nearly lost her. Grumbling with irritation, he weaved his way through the robotic pedestrians, and caught up to her inside … where she stood ramrod-straight, with a look of rapture on her face.

Rows upon rows of stores and shops spread away from them in a great circle, decorated with lasers and holograms and colorful logos. The open area in the middle of the shops was larger than a football field, and was configured as a recreational area for robotic citizens to rest and relax. Ten layers of shops were stacked one on top of the other, ten spectacular circles of glamour and lights that reached up towards a great crystal rotunda that shone with the warmth of a noonday sun. Dozens of vertical elevator tubes were arranged around the circle, providing quick passage to any level. Thousands of robots, in every variety imaginable, rolled and scurried busily between the stores, filling the tower's interior with the chatter of conversation, against a backdrop of soft electronic music piped in through a speaker system.

"You've got to be kidding me," chuckled Drew, as he took in the spectacle. "Wow, this is really something else … Jenny? Hmm? Jenny?" He snapped his fingers in front of her face, getting no response. Jenny had entered nirvana. "It's the mall of my dreams," she squeaked, as she walked onto a great stainless steel escalator. Drew hopped on behind her, shaking his head in amusement and disbelief.

Jenny's head snapped back and forth, trying to take in everything at once. Hundreds of robot girls – _and guys_ – walked alone, and in groups, between stores filled with everything a young robot could possibly want. There were stores filled with glamorous body panels and paints, new arms and legs, attachments and upgrades; the very latest in robotic fashion. Stylish chassis designs were on display in the windows of shops like Robocrombie & Switch, Hot Sprocket, Limited Tool, Logic Gap, and … _blush!_ … Victoria's Circuits. Robot families shopped for furniture at Crank and Barrel, and wheeled shopping carts of housewares out of JC Pulley. You could recharge your power cells at Battery Barn. You could get your feet re-surfaced at Tread Locker. Beauty salons hummed with the sounds of polishing tools and grinding wheels. Robots relaxed at a gourmet petro-café, sipping one of the hundreds of available blends of oil. It was the type of place that Jenny would dismiss as an impossible dream.

They got off the escalator in front of Gears-Roebuck, one of the larger stores, and took a moment to collect themselves. Jenny gazed in wonder at the colorful sculptures of stars and planets, hovering in the air over the common plaza area. Drew gawked like a rubbernecking tourist … he felt like he was on the set of a science fiction movie. Then he laughed, nudged Jenny's arm, and nodded his head towards three cute robot boys, riding up the escalator. Jenny's cheeks flashed blue as she realized that they were _checking her out_. "Want me to tell them I'm your brother?" chuckled Drew.

That earned him a smack in the ribs, and suddenly they broke out into a fit of laughter. Drew leaned back against an elevator tube, wiping the hair out of his eyes. "Okay … if I asked you yesterday to describe what Cluster Prime would be like … is _this_ what you would have thought of?"

Jenny shook her head no, and then grew serious. "I remember … the Cluster ambassador told me that Cluster Prime was a paradise for robots. I always assumed that he was _lying_. How … how can this all be possible?" She looked out over the plaza again, at ten of thousands of robots – happy, _smiling_ robots – going about their business, seemingly without a care in the world …

When a bit of reality reared its ugly head. Four roach-drones had just come in through the entranceway five floors below, and a moment later, a twelve-foot Cluster warrior thundered onto the plaza. Smytus and his crew had tracked them into the Galleria. Jenny grabbed Drew, and ducked behind an elevator tube, peeking out with a renewed pang of fear stabbing at her circuits. Stanley's egg-shaped body wheeled in frantically behind Smytus, and they exchanged words in a heated argument. The commander snapped off a set of orders, and the drones began to fan out, searching the lower level of the mall.

"Great," Jenny groaned. "Just when I was starting to enjoy myself. We'd better get going." A few steps away from the elevators was a glass-top pedestal, which projected a holographic map of the mall into the air. "There's another skywalk on Level Seven. We can use it to cross over to the next tower …"

"Too late," growled Drew, pointing up two levels, where they could see a pair of roach-drones prowling the walkway in front of the skywalk exit. "Looks like they'll try to squeeze us between them as they search up from the floor. You know, I'm really starting to get sick of this Smytus jerk." He studied the holo-map for a few seconds, tapping his metallic chin. "What say we make _him_ do the running for a change?"

"What are you going to do?" she asked, a bit puzzled.

"Just make sure none of those stupid robo-roaches sees you. You're the one they're really after. I'll meet you back here in … ten minutes." And without explanation, he turned and walked briskly into the crowd, circling the fifth level, taking note of where Smytus and Stanley stood, five floors below.

"Hope he knows what he's doing," Jenny muttered to herself … just as she noticed two red roach-drones pop out of an elevator tube, only fifty feet to her left. _Yikes!_ She dropped to hide behind the holographic pedestal, waiting to see what the drones would do. One of them turned left, the other turned right – and the roach-drones began a methodical sweep of the fifth level, drawing odd stares from the mall's robotic patrons. That meant that one roach-drone was walking directly towards her. She knew she could take out one roach-drone with her eyes closed. But a fight in a crowded mall would be sure to attract a _lot_ of attention that she didn't want right now.

The roach-drone was only twenty feet away. But now shoppers were giving _her_ strange looks, and there was nothing she could do about it. She powered up her palm laser, wishing there was some way for her to avoid an incident. The drone _whined_ up to the other side of the pedestal, almost within arm's reach – then Jenny caught a break. A robotic child started arguing with his mother, stomping his wheeled feet, and demanded a trip to Clustard Queen for dessert. The scene distracted the drone just long enough for Jenny to speed into the nearest store – a specialty headwear shop, Antenna Republic.

Jenny smiled from behind a display stand of designer antennas, as she watched the disgusting roach-drone continue its search of the Galleria's fifth level. Now that she was actually _in_ one of the stores, she decided to have a look around; it was still hard for her to believe that she was standing in giant mall filled with stores just for robots. She wandered among the displays, giggling as she put different models on top of her head; she never realized that there could be so many types and styles of antennas. Then she heard the sounds of a squabble, and noticed two humanoid robot girls standing at the sales counter. Her turbo-pumps revved with glee. Teenage robot girls … _just like me!_

The robot girls exchanged impassioned hand gestures with the store clerk-bot, who simply folded her arms, and shook her bulb-shaped head. Jenny edged closer, still a bit hesitant to talk to any of the locals, to see what the fuss was about. The two girls were obviously friends; one was short and squat, painted in deep reds and burgundies, with a large metallic bow on top of her head. The other was tall and svelte, with a tapered face and an attractive, streamlined chassis. She was painted in a style almost matching Jenny, with a muted purple in place of pale blue. It seemed like _she_ was the one with the problem; she was holding an antenna in her hands, arguing with the clerk behind the counter.

"What … what do you mean, I can't exchange it? I bought it here just yesterday!" The robot girl clasped her hands together, pleading. "You told me it was compatible, and I spent all last night trying to make it fit! I had to wear my old antenna to work today, and it's practically worn out!"

"I'm sorry, miss," shrugged the clerk-bot, "it was a clearance item. No refunds – that's store policy."

"Oh, this is such a _total_ lube job," huffed the short girl. "What a racket! What a bunch of con artists!"

The tall girl _clanked_ her hands on her hips. "So what you're telling me is that I spent seventy-eight credits for an antenna, and all I've got now is a fancy _dipstick?_" Jenny listened to them argue back and forth for a few more moments … then she summoned her courage, and cleared her throat to get their attention.

"Excuse me, miss?" the clerk-bot asked her. "Can I so something for you?"

"Um … if you don't mind, I think I might be able to help out." The customer arched an eyebrow at Jenny, but shrugged her shoulders and handed the new antenna to her. Jenny inspected the end of the antenna, then ratcheted her legs a few feet higher, to look at the receptacle on top of the girl's head. She deployed a laser scanner, and realized that the antenna's base was a little too wide. As the girls watched in awe, Jenny extended a grinding wheel from her wrist, and shaved away a thin layer of metal. Then she cooled off the antenna with a fan, deployed from her other wrist. "That should do the trick."

The tall robot girl fitted her new antenna into the top of her head, and squealed with delight as she felt her connectors lock it into place. Then to Jenny's amazement, the girl's hair sprung to life. Long strips of metal foil hung from the back of her head; with the _whirr_ of servo motors, the foil strips spun around the antenna, forming a large parabolic dish. She balled her fists, and bounced up and down in excitement. "It works! It works! Oh, thank you, thank you – _so_ – _much!_ You're a life saver … um …"

"Jenny," she smiled, as her legs returned to normal. "Don't worry about it – it was no biggie."

"Are you kidding?" blurted the short girl, bursting with admiration. "That was so awesome! That was high-frequency awesome! That was awesome to the tenth power …"

"Downshift it, girl," teased her friend, as her dish unwound into a curtain of foil that flowed over her shoulders. "Seriously, Jenny … you really saved my bumper. I am no good with mechanical stuff – I am strictly a _software_ kind of robot. My mom was already giving me a hard time about … Oh, oh, wow, I am being so completely rude! This is my _very_ excitable friend, Dottie. And I'm LSN-1482. _I know, I know_ … it's a real voice chip twister. Um … we were just on our way to hook up with some friends, over at the lube court. Would you like to come along with us and, umm … hang out?"

Jenny's smile had never been so wide before in her life. "That … sounds … _great!_"

* * *

Drew jostled his way through the busy crowds, and glanced over the railing to see Smytus pacing back and forth on the plaza floor, almost directly below him. He knew the roach-drones were out scouring the mall for Jenny; she was the trophy that the queen wanted, after all. Well, if they wanted Jenny so badly, then that's who they were going to get. He called up a copy of the mall's 3-D map in his memory, went over it one more time, then heaved with a deep sigh. _I swore I was never going to do this again_, he groaned to himself, rolling his eyes. _Well, if this works, nobody's ever going to know about it._

He strolled into an elevator tube, and stepped on the floating disk inside. A synthesized voice asked him where he wanted to go, and a split-second later, he was sailing towards the plaza floor. The trip was faster than he expected, but he was getting better at shape-shifting. _Schwerrrrp._ He softened into a doughy ball of silver-green, stretched himself a bit taller, streamlined his legs … and grew a set of pigtails.

Two seconds later, _foomp_, the disk stopped at the first floor, and the elevator voice politely asked for him to leave the tube. But instead, a six-and-a-half-foot robot girl stepped out, painted white and pale blue – the spitting image of Jenny. Drew gave a quick look over his reshaped body – _oops, forgot the belly-bolt_ – and was more or less satisfied, for such a rush job. _Well, time to mess with Smytie-poo's head_.

Smytus was standing only twenty feet in front of him; the timing couldn't have been better. He turned around just as 'Jenny' stepped out of the elevator, and his beady robotic eyes nearly shot out of his face. "XJ-9!!!" he bellowed, raising his crackling fists over his head. "Oh, you led us a merry chase, you insolent brat – but you cannot escape Smytus! Lord of the Outer …"

"You know, Commander Doofus," laughed 'Jenny', "you talk too much!" Then she made a face at him, and took off in a sprint across the plaza, zigzagging her way around robotic shoppers. Smytus cringed with rage, scaring ordinary citizens who recoiled in alarm at his display of weaponry – then he deactivated his blasters, as quickly and quietly as he could. He had his _own_ reasons for not wanting attention. The mighty Cluster warrior flipped open his arm panel, and activated his radio. "All drone units, to the first floor, immediately! XJ-9 has been spotted. She's heading for the monorail stop."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Four / Seven Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	4. Mingling With the Natives

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Four – Mingling With the Natives

* * *

Brad heard the sound of a fence swinging open, and the vehicle lurched forward, nearly knocking him off of the hard metal bench. The transport's robotic driver seemed to enjoy making sudden stops and starts; the disorienting effect on the students was made even worse by the total lack of windows. There wasn't much slack in the chains; whenever Brad lost his balance, his collar started to choke him. And being chained up to a klutz like Sheldon meant that every time _Sheldon_ lost his balance, his collar started to choke him. Brad dug his fingers into his temples, and tried to stay calm – everyone on the transport was seriously stressed out, and some of the kids were on the verge of losing it.

They jolted to a halt, and the ramp opened up with a mechanical _whine_. Two drones tugged at the students' chains, dragging them off the transport that had carried them from the military base to … wherever _here_ was. Brad shielded his eyes from the bright red sun and scanned the area, trying to make as much sense as he could from his surroundings. The towers of the capital city looked a lot closer now. He was standing in a large assembly area, surrounded by a tall electric fence, next to a row of dark green, box-shaped buildings. A dank, stale odor wafted through the air, along with pained sounds of misery and exhaustion. Human prisoners jogged by in chains, gasping and sweating under the watchful eyes, and the sadistic grins, of intimidating twelve-foot guard-bots. It appeared to be some kind of prison camp – except that shipments of humans were both arriving _and_ departing.

A ten-foot crimson robot strolled out, clasping his massive forearms behind his back, with a calm smile on his ant-like face. "Ah, the next herd is here a little early. Might as well get things rolling!" He paced back and forth in front of the students, casually inspecting them, and pulled out a clipboard. "Good afternoon, pitiful humans, and welcome to the Stockyards! My name is Omicron Fifteen, and I'll be handling your Slavery Orientation. Now, before we get started …"

"What!?! Stockyards?" shouted Brad. "You've gotta be kidding! I'm not a Holstein!"

"Slavery!?! That's against the law!" Chloe protested. "Don't we have, like, _rights_ and junk?"

Omicron Fifteen's torso rocked with tinny laughter. "Rights?!? Ha, ha, ha … oh, monkeys don't have rights, you silly fleshling! Oh, ho, ho … oh, that's funny. All right, let's quiet down and get back to business. If you behave yourselves, you'll get a chewy treat when we're done. Now, I realize that many of you may not have considered a career in slavery …"

"_E-nough!_" huffed an accented voice. Brit Krust stomped her feet, and pointed a gloved hand into the robot's chest. "I'm not going to put up with this for one more second! Now that you _horrid_ robots have captured Jenny and Drew for your little _empire_, or whatever, you don't need us anymore. Take us back to that starship, and get us off of this junkpile planet, right this instant!"

"Yeah, an' how 'bout losin' this _nasty_ ol' collar," hissed her cousin Tiff, tugging at the iron band around her neck. "_Hel-lo!_ Do I look like a Doberman Pinscher to you, tinhead?"

Brit wiped a smudge of grease from her own collar. "Yes, it's grimy, filthy, and it clashes with my belt!" She folded her arms with a haughty smile. "It's only fair to warn you, my daddy has the finest lawyers in Tremorton on retainer. And he plays golf with our congressman every Saturday! So just take us back to Earth, right now, and we _might_ forget the whole thing ever happened."

Omicron Fifteen stared incredulously at the Krusts' defiant faces, and shook his massive head. "Sigh, I see this from time to time in humans. Their mooshy hamburger-brains fail to process even the simplest data. Very well, I'll have to resort to an _alternative_ teaching technique."

A metal probe extended from his right claw, crackled to life with a blinding glare, and spawned a long, glowing tendril of hissing, sizzling energy. With a flick of his wrist, he cracked the energy whip over the students' heads with a deafening _snap_, filling the air with the stench of ozone. They trembled in fear, and Omicron Fifteen took on a more menacing demeanor. "Listen, skin-sacks, and listen well – I'm only going to say this once. You are now _slaves_ of the Cluster Empire! I don't care who you were before … you are all equally pathetic _meat puppets_ in the eyes of your robotic superiors! You shall be taken into the stables to be washed, tagged, and fitted for your obedience collars. Then we'll assign you to a hard labor factory … where you will spend the rest of your worthless lives!"

Sheldon dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together melodramatically, with tears welling up in his eyes. "Oh please, vile robotic overlord, grant me but one humble request? If I must be a slave … then may I be assigned to Queen Jenny? So that I may tend to her every whim for all the rest of my days?"

"I can't promise anything … but I _do_ like the change in attitude. Nice form on the groveling!"

"You think you're pretty tough, don't you, bug-face?" Brad pulled Sheldon back to his feet, and raised his voice for all his classmates to hear. The kids looked completely terrified – heck, _he_ felt terrified – but he was getting sick and tired of being scared. "Everyone, listen to me. Jenny is _going_ to come for us! I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I _know_ that she's going to escape. And then she and Drew are gonna bust us out of here. She's the most awesome, most powerful robot in the whole universe, and there is no way she's just going to let these Cluster losers turn us all into a bunch of gear-polishers! Just think about all the incredible stuff you've seen her do. She told us to hang on. She said that everything was going to be okay. Well, guys – I believe her!"

"Silence, monkey boy," snarled the massive ant-bot, shooting him a look of disgust. He jerked the end of the long chain, cracked his whip, and herded the reluctant slaves towards the stables. "You are only filling their puny minds with false hope. Resistance is futile, foolish humans! No robot, and certainly no _human_, has _ever_ escaped from Cluster Prime!"

* * *

"Faster! Faster, you fools! She's escaping!"

Commander Smytus bristled with anxiety – they _had_ to stop XJ-9 before she got to the monorail. His roach-drones were on the first floor now, vectoring towards the rail station, trying to intercept the fugitive teenager before she left the Plaza. The Galleria was overflowing with robots doing their last-minute Festival shopping, so even six drones and a Cluster Warrior sprinting through the crowds didn't cause much of a stir. The commander dodged around a bulky, tank-shaped lady robot, fighting to keep a set of blue pigtails in sight – but XJ-9 had almost made it to the station exit. She turned left, and disappeared into a wave of robots _clanking_ down the concourse, towards for the monorails.

Seconds later, Smytus turned into the rail station, and groaned. There was no sign of XJ-9 anywhere in the crowd; it was as if she had disappeared into vapor. Frustration boiled over in his coolant loops. Every second that ticked by increased the chances of losing her in the sea of Cluster citizens. He rudely shoved innocent mall-going robots aside, ignoring their protests as he made his way towards the ticket gates. There was still no sign of her. And there were four lines of passengers, heading for trains on four separate tracks, heading in four different directions …

The commander grabbed a startled ticketing droid by the arms, a skinny yellow robot with a wide, pill-shaped face. "_You!_ This is official Empire business. I'm looking for a young robot girl, about so high, light blue paint job, pigtails. She came through here a few seconds ago!"

"A robot girl?" buzzed a voice from behind. "With pigtails? And a blue belly-bolt?"

Smytus wheeled around to see a second ticketing droid, a green one, looking on nervously. The warrior shook him by his boxy shoulders. "That's her – you've seen her! Where did she go?"

"She purchased a ticket and proceeded to the Green Rail," answered the helpful droid.

With perfect timing, Smytus' six roach-drones finally arrived at the station – just as Stanley's egg-shaped body rounded the corner, wheezing along on his single wheel. The commander waved frantically for them to hurry through the grumbling crowd, and join him at the front of the line. "She's on the Green Rail! It's still loading, we can catch her if we hurry! Drones one and two, take the …"

The skinny green droid held out his hand, gesturing for Smytus to stop. "Tickets, please."

"WHAT?!?" screamed Smytus, nearly bursting into flame on the spot. "I have no need of a _ticket_!!! I am Smytus! Champion of the Empire! Lord of the Outer Rings! Mayor of …"

Stanley smacked into the warrior robot's legs with an exhausted _clank_. "Hey, I thought we were in a hurry, Commander Cheapskate! Quit arguing and just pay the droid, already!"

"But I … but … _arghhh!!!_ All right!" A small panel on Smytus' left forearm popped open, and he fumbled around inside. "Aughh, wouldn't you know, I'm out of cash … let's see, I know it's here somewhere …" He produced a thin, colored plastic card. "Do you take ClusterBank?"

"Umm … of course, sir," replied the ticketing droid. He slipped a hand behind his back, and held the card up to his eyes, inspecting it very … _very_ … thoroughly. Then he pulled out a reader unit, and swiped Smytus' card through. "Thank you, sir, and have a nice day!"

The commander snarled as he burst past the gate with his roach-drones, and ordered them to board the green monorail. Then, just as Stanley was about to follow, Smytus stopped him. "Listen, scientist, and listen closely. You and I … and my six drones … are the _only ones_ who know that XJ-9 has escaped. I want you to go back to your underground laboratory, and behave as if everything is perfectly normal. If the queen calls, stall her until I can recapture XJ-9."

"_What!?! _Are your microchips fried, you idiot? If the queen finds out I'm lying to her …"

"If she finds out that XJ-9 is gone, we'll be recycled into _oil cans_, fool!" Smytus grabbed the short genius-bot by the antennae, and spoke in a hushed voice. "Don't tell the royal guard, don't tell the capital police, don't tell _anybody_. Just stall, until you hear from me. Our _lives_ depend on it, scientist."

And on that horrible thought, Stanley wheeled away in a worried frenzy, heading towards the hover-taxis. Smytus bulled his way past the still-puzzled crowd of rail travelers, running for the last car of the green monorail, in desperate pursuit of XJ-9. He slipped inside just as the doors closed, and the monorail smoothly pulled away from the Galleria.

With the excitement passed, the robots in the ticketing area filed back into line, impatiently waiting for the ticketing droid to resume his duties. But instead, he excused himself for a moment, stepped off to the side, and ducked behind an advertising banner … where, unseen by the crowd, a duplicate green ticketing droid was sitting against the wall, in a deactivated state.

The standing droid shimmered with waves of nano-gooey distortion, and in seconds, Drew had reverted back to his normal, silver-green appearance. He heaved a huge sigh of relief, let out a small chuckle, and pumped his fists in victory. Then he gently placed his fingers against the back of the _real_ ticketing droid's head. Its eyes flashed to life, and Drew helped the droid back to his feet, asking if he felt okay after his little "malfunction". The ticketing robot nodded, went back to his gate, and Drew strolled up the concourse, back into the Capital Galleria.

_So, nobody knows we've escaped_, he grinned. He clasped his hands behind his back, heading out into the plaza as hundreds of robots walked and rolled right past him, some even giving him a friendly wave or a polite nod. He stared up at the bustling activity of the Galleria's ten shopping levels, and the crystal rotunda above, soaking in the wonder of it all – and, for the first time that day, relaxing a bit.

Then he noticed a decorated column standing a few yards away. The logo on the side read _ClusterBank_, and it had a small screen with a keypad below it. It looked an _awful_ lot like an ATM machine. Drew smiled, stuck out a finger … and with a little concentration, the finger stretched and flattened, until it had turned into a colorful plastic card. A perfect replica of Smytus' ClusterBank card.

"I wonder how much a commander makes," he snickered evilly, as he stuck his finger in the machine.

* * *

The robot girls squealed with delight as they primped in front of the mirror, striking ridiculous fashion-model poses until they were doubled over in laughter. The Sunglass Strut booth was having a thirty-percent-off sale, and the girls simply had to check out the latest styles. Jenny had never worn sunglasses before in her life; it was pretty tough when you didn't have ears or a nose. But the pair on her face right now were attached with tiny magnets, and the tilted elliptical lenses looked very, _very_ cool. She glanced at the girls, over the tops of the lenses. "I don't know … what do you guys think?"

LSN-1482 took off a wraparound visor, and burst into a huge grin. "Oh wow, Jenny, those look _so awesome_ on you! Look, there's even a little bit of color in the lenses, and they go with your pigtails! Do you think they have them in mauve?"

Dot, who had already fallen in love with five sets of glasses and three pairs of visors, was looking over a display of retractable models, when she dropped everything and shouted with glee. "Oh, my, Cog. Fifty percent off tinted eyes!" She bolted from the booth, to a display window filled with a rainbow of colored replacement eyes, available in everything from infrared to ultraviolet. The brightly lit sign over the store read "Eyecrafters – New Eyes in About an Hour."

"We'd better go after her, before she buys herself a new head," laughed LSN-1482, as she grabbed Jenny's hand and set off after her friend. They had to dodge around a six-wheeled delivery robot, who was towing a hover-dolly loaded with a new big-screen video set. "Man, the mall is insane today! I don't think I've ever seen it this crowded."

"I've never seen this many robots before in my _life_!" beamed Jenny, as she gazed over the railing into the Plaza below. There were thousands of robots on each level of the mall – and to her relief, there were no signs of Smytus or his roach-drones. "I still can't believe how amazing this place is!"

"Oh, is this your first time in the Galleria?"

"Actually, it's my first time in the city. Well … to tell you the truth … it's sort of my first time on the _planet_." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Jenny was afraid she'd made a mistake …

But LSN-1482 clenched her fists, and gushed with excitement. "Oh, that is _so cool!_ I've never met anyone from off-world before! Wow, I've always wanted to travel, but I've lived in the capital my whole life. Big city girl, assembled and raised. Don't get me wrong … it's really nice here."

"Tell me about it," said Jenny, in a dreamy voice. "I've always wondered what Cluster Prime would be like, and I can honestly say, it's _nothing_ like I imagined it would be." _Boy, ain't that the truth._

"Yeah, y'know, living all my life here, I guess I'm just used to it by now. But I bet there's lots of amazing stuff back on your planet! What part of the empire are you from, Jenny?"

"Umm … it's … ahh … way out in the boonies, you've probably never even heard of it." Until Jenny learned more, it probably wasn't a good idea to tell anyone that she wasn't part of the Cluster. It certainly wasn't a good idea to say that she came from a planet of humans.

Fortunately, they caught up with Dot just then, and prying her away from the display window provided a much-needed change of subject. LSN-1482 reminded her that they were supposed to be heading to the lube court, and they slipped back into the pedestrian traffic, chatting and giggling. Jenny excitedly asked the girls a barrage of questions, eager to learn everything she could about them. Dot – whose full name was Dot Matrix – had also been a city girl all her life. The girls went to school together – even on Cluster Prime, robots went to school, though only for three hours a day. They both liked the same bands – Electric Discharge _totally rocked_ – and they both liked hanging at the mall, watching holo-movies, and visiting the observation deck of Mile High Tower. _Everything about them seems so normal_, thought Jenny, scratching her chin in a wonderful state of confusion. _If they're assimilated, they sure don't look it!_

Suddenly an electronic chime sounded over the Galleria's sound system, and every robot's attention turned to the open space in the middle of the mall. A laser projector activated, and painted four holographic video displays in mid-air – giant virtual movie screens, just hanging there, displaying vibrant images and graphics. "Welcome to the Capital Galleria of Cluster Prime, where style and savings are _never_ obsolete! And a special welcome to all those visiting the capital for Royal Festival Week!"

_Hmmm, everyone keeps talking about this Festival thing. Must be some kind of robot holiday_ … then the fluid in Jenny's hydraulics ran cold, as the image dissolved into the smiling face of none other than the evil Queen Vexus herself. Except that in the holo-video, she didn't seem evil at all; in fact, she was smiling pleasantly, waving to a cheering crowd of her adoring subjects. "We hope you enjoy your visit," continued the narrator, "and have a happy and safe Royal Festival! Remember, the Galleria is open during normal shopping hours all week, and visitor backup services are available on Level Nine, in the Ministry of Health pavilion. Show you care, have yourself and your loved ones backed up every night. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law." Then the virtual screens faded away, like colored smoke.

"Woo hoo! A whole week off school!" cheered Dot, as the three girls arrived at the Lube Court. Wrought-iron tables and chairs were scattered over a glimmering floor of stainless steel, etched with elaborate geometric patterns. Artificial plants hung from the ceiling, and a gentle fountain gurgled happily away in the middle of the court. Small shops and cafés surrounded the tables, serving up hundreds of blends of oils, lubricants, and recharge packs for power cells. With the busy holiday crowds, most of the tables were already taken by weary shoppers giving their servos a rest. But the girls managed to find an open spot at the edge of the court, next to the noise and bustle of the shopping activity.

"Looks like Tank and Ro-bekka aren't here yet," said LSN-1482, as she surveyed the area. "Anyone feel like getting something to drink? You know, I always wind up getting oil when I come here. I want to try one of those new silicone smoothies for a change!"

"Help yourself," grinned Dot, lost in a dreamy gaze. "I've got everything I want _right here_."

Jenny and LSN-1482 giggled as they realized that Dot was staring off into the crowd, scanning for cute robot boys. Currently, she was radar-locked on a tall, wide-chested guy with a gleaming copper finish and outrageously cool hair. Jenny joined in the fun, and soon all three girls were one-upping each other, trying to see who could spot the cutest guy. It all just innocent fun, of course, but it was something that Jenny had never been able to do back home. She knew she was still in danger, and she knew she had to find her classmates and save them … but a part of her was _really_ starting to enjoy herself.

"Jenny, are you going to the Festival Opening tomorrow morning?" asked Dot. "I think Queen Vexus is supposed to be there. It would be pretty cool to see her in the royal hover-carriage! Do you want to go, Eighty-two? You have the day off, don't you?"

LSN-1482 groaned with sarcasm. "Dot, I've told you a hundred times not to call me that. And yes, I actually _do_ have the day off tomorrow – as amazing as _that_ sounds!"

Jenny arched a curious eyebrow. "Have the day off? You mean you go to school _and_ have a job, too?"

"Hey, what do you think the 'LSN' stands for?" giggled Dot, as she ogled a broad-shoulder robot boy, painted red with pewter trim. "She's a big shot!"

"I'm not a _big shot_!" growled LSN-1482, slapping her friend in the arm with a loud _clang_. "You'll have to forgive Dot – she likes to _exaggerate_ sometimes. Yes, I have an after-school job over at Links, Systems, and Networks – that's what the 'LSN' stands for. I work on the Cluster data networks – monitoring communications, setting up new accounts, fixing problems in the central computers – yawn city. I'm basically just a civil servant. I mean, it's nice to help other robots, and I am doing something important …" – she folded her arms, and rolled her eyes – "… as my mom and dad _constantly_ remind me. But it makes it hard to find time to have some fun."

"I know _just_ what you mean!" Jenny shouted, a little too loudly. "Sorry … I mean, I kind of have a job, too. It's pretty important; I have to protect the world, save the day, stuff like that. But it _can_ be annoying sometimes. My mom is always interrupting me whenever I'm with my friends …"

LSN-1482's oval eyes sprang wide open. "Ooh! Ooh! With me, it's my dad. He's an LSN droid too, see? Big family tradition thing. So I have to deal with him at home, _and_ take orders from him the rest of the day! I love my dad and all, but sometimes he just really fragments my hard drive!"

"Wow, this is amazing!" squealed Jenny. She had more in common with this Cluster robot girl than she could have imagined. "We've both got lame responsibilities _and_ bossy parents!"

"See, Jenny," laughed Dot, "I told you Eighty-two was a big shot! _Oooh_, hotties at ten o'clock."

LSN-1482 slapped her forehead. "Okay. Call me that again, and I'll disassemble your voice box."

"What's wrong with Eighty-Two?" said Jenny. "I think it sounds cute! My mom gave me a clunker of a name, so I picked a new one. _Oops_ … uh … not that there's anything wrong with LSN-1482! I think it's, ahh … _heh-heh_ … really pretty!"

"No, it's _not_." The teenage girl could see the embarrassment on Jenny's face, but she waved it off with a smile and a laugh. "It sounds like something you'd order out of a spare parts catalog. Mom and I have had this argument at _least_ a hundred times. But I can't make up my mind on a replacement name, and Dot keeps thinking up progressively worse ones for me."

"Hey, at least I'm trying!" Dot huffed back … then she started poking LSN-1482 in the arm. "Three targets, sighted and locked on, over by the fuel cell bar. Come on, girl, flash those optic sensors at them! Jenny, flip your pigtails back and forth."

"You really, _really_ need to lower your thermostat," giggled LSN-1482. "You're starting to scare me, Dot. Besides, those guys are _way_ out of my league. Looking is fun, but let's be honest … no cute guy in his right mind is going to walk over to a table with a _freak_ like me sitting at it."

"You're not a freak!" said Jenny, as Dot groaned with a _here-we-go-again_ look on her face. "LSN-1482, you're beautiful! Why in the world would you say something like that?"

"Jenny, that's really sweet of you, but … " She stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, with her mouth hanging open, and drifted off into a faraway gaze. Jenny and Dot were momentarily confused, and worried that something might be wrong with her systems – until they saw the dreamy smile on her face.

The girls scanned the crowd, trying in vain to spot the amazing guy who had LSN-1482 staring off into space with doe-like eyes. She sank her rounded chin into her slender hands, lost in a blissful trance. "_Sigh_ … he's so sleek … so streamlined … so _shiny_."

"Huh? Shiny?" Jenny deployed a set of binoculars over her eyes. "Which one are you talking about?"

"The one with those _cute green stripes_ all over his body," she giggled.

"Hey, Jenny!" shouted Drew, waving frantically across the lube court to get her attention. His face broke out in a huge smile, relieved that he'd found her in the midst of the shopping chaos. "Geez, I've been looking everywhere for you! I thought you were going to wait for me back at the holo-map!"

"Oh, no!" gasped Jenny, as she realized that she'd forgotten all about him. With a stab of guilt, she waved him over to their table … then she heard Dot fighting back snorts of laughter. When she grasped the reason why, she had to fight back laughter too. Poor LSN-1482 was blushing a bright lavender, despite her best efforts to hide her face in her hands. She looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

"Well, _you_ certainly got comfortable in a hurry," chuckled Drew, as he strolled up to the table. "Anyway, I am the bearer of good news! Our gap-toothed commander friend is off chasing a wild robotic goose …" Then he _finally_ noticed that Jenny wasn't sitting alone. "Oh … umm … uh … hello, there."

Jenny grinned with a mischievous smile. "Drew, these are my new friends. Girls, this is Drew … he goes to school with me back home. Drew, I'd like you to meet Dot, and …"

LSN-1482 shot her hand out like she'd been hit with a downed power line. "_Drew!_ Hi! Ah … um … we just bumped into Jenny, back at the … um … place, by the … um … thing, and … name! My name! My name is … ahhhh … L, S, N …" Then her voice box seized up.

Drew reached out to shake her hand, glanced into her eyes … her dark, warm, expressive eyes, quivering with excitement and emotion … and felt like he'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. His nanobot innards swirled around in circles, as if he'd swallowed a blender. His poor nano-computers were short-circuiting … they had to be, because he'd lost the ability to think. His vision sensors were obviously malfunctioning. This robot girl – this amazingly beautiful robot girl – in front of him was _blushing_. And to his horror, he could feel a twinge of green coming over his cheeks as well. After a few awkward seconds of silence that seemed like hours, he managed to get his mouth moving again. "Ahh, L, S, N … Allison? Umm … did you say your name was Allison?"

Jenny and Dot giggled furiously, as their purple-cheeked friend quickly thought it over, and broke into a huge smile. "Yes … yes, I did! That's my name. Allison."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Five / Seven Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	5. Wrinkles In Perfection

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Five – Wrinkles In Perfection

* * *

The sleek red hover-convertible soared through the skylanes with the smooth speed of a bullet train, giving everyone a magnificent view of the urban canyons from half a mile above street level. Even from that altitude, the roofs of the steel and bronze skyscrapers looked close enough to touch; and of course, Mile High Tower still soared high over their heads, almost doubling the height of any other structure in the robotic metropolis. Drew grinned like a five-year old at his first carnival, as the neck-snapping acceleration pushed him back into his seat. "So how fast will she go?" he shouted.

"Top down, she'll do half the speed of sound," boasted Tank, "with the top up, she's _orbital_." His mouth-grill glowed with pride, while his girlfriend Ro-bekka rolled her eye-bulbs with a _here-we-go-again_ expression. As Allison and Dot had explained to Jenny and Drew back at the Galleria, Tank was _very, very obsessed_ with his hovercar; but once you got past that, he was a really nice guy. After he and Ro-bekka had shown up at the mall, and learned that Jenny and Drew were "off-worlders", Tank had insisted that they accept a ride in his baby, to see all the famous sights of the capital. He gestured off to his left, pointing down to a bowl-shaped building wrapped around a large playing surface. "There's the new stadium – Camshaft Yards! The Tin Sox are in town tonight. Oh, they're running on all pistons right now, but trust me, their gears will seize up in the playoffs, and they'll choke like always!"

Drew turned to Allison, sitting beside him in the back seat, and pushed his silvery bangs out of his eyes. "I hope this isn't too boring for you!" he laughed. "You must think I'm pretty ridiculous, getting all excited over stuff that you see every day of your life!"

"No way!" she shouted, battling the wind noise. "I spend most of my time down _in_ the city, not _above_ it. Besides … " – she gave Drew a teasing glance, as the wind whipped her hair into a river of roiling violet – "… the view up here today is _amazing_." They held eye contact for a moment too long, and broke out into a pair of silly grins, while Dot just leaned back and shook her head.

Jenny fought hard to hold back a giggle, as the little drama unfolded behind her. Drew and Allison had been flirting nonstop ever since they left the lube court. "Well, I'm glad everyone's _enjoying_ themselves," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Then she leaned over the door, and simply enjoyed the sensation of her pigtails flapping in the breeze. "Tank, we really appreciate this! The city is just so beautiful … I can hardly believe my eyes! Hey, down there – is that an amusement park below us?"

"Biggest one on Cluster Prime," answered Ro-bekka, as she checked her antennas in the mirror. "They say the cars on the new roller coaster can go supersonic. Good luck getting me on that thing!"

"And over there! And there! And there!" Jenny gawked excitedly at an outdoor concert hall, a three-dimensional speedcar track, and an art museum that looked like it had been built by Dr. Seuss. She sank her face into her arms, and watched the impossible fantasy of the all-robot planet slide by before her glassy eyes. _I just can't believe_, she kept thinking to herself, _that this is really Cluster Prime!_ But the skeptical part of her electronic brain was growing quieter by the minute. All of the evidence seemed to prove the Cluster Ambassador's boast – it was a paradise, where robots lived in freedom, peace, and harmony. A place where she would never be shunned, or mocked, or picked on for being different. She closed her eyes, with a soft, dreamy smile. _Paradise …_

"Well, boys and girls," said Tank, "there it is, in all its glory!"

Jenny wasn't sure what he was talking about – until she looked up.

And saw the pyramid.

A hollow iron pyramid, covering an area the size of four city blocks, soared high into the air, silhouetted against the reddening sky in a mix of dark metallic grays and gleaming copper. A skeleton of mega-trusses, crisscrossing in regular triangular patterns, surrounded a central tower of copper and steel over a thousand feet tall. Perched atop the tower, at the very apex of the pyramid, was an immense copper dome topped with a ring of ornately decorated spires. They jutted upwards like jeweled daggers stabbing the clouds, giving the entire dome-structure the appearance of a shining crown. Secondary obelisks stood sentry around the central tower, punching through the pyramid of trusses like javelins. Each was topped with a tall flagpole that flew a huge green-and-red banner, banners so large that they appeared to wave in slow motion – each bearing the royal seal of the C-shaped gear.

"Queen Vexus' palace," Jenny said out loud, to nobody in particular. Without even asking, she knew that's what it had to be. The pyramid completely dominated the landscape, sitting on a square mile of fenced-off territory, with dozens of smaller towers surrounding it. Jenny felt a shiver run through her microchips; staring down at the very center of the Cluster Empire, the palace looked as evil as the cruel robot queen who lived inside. The brooding iron pyramid served Jenny as a valuable reminder; if this was paradise, then the devil was running the place.

But she seemed to be the only one who felt that way. Dot leaned forward against the front seat, jockeying for a better view. "Oh, wow … the palace is so beautiful this time of day!"

"It's going to look even more impressive tomorrow," added Tank, as he eased the hovercar into a slow turn. "I hear there's supposed to be some big ceremony, and a military parade!"

Jenny squirmed with discomfort at the mention of the ceremony. She'd almost forgotten that mere hours ago, she had been in Vexus' clutches, heading to this very palace to be reprogrammed into a loyal puppet queen. Anger simmered in her coolant tubing, as she remembered Vexus' taunting, arrogant voice. "Yeah, big ceremony, whatever … so what's the military parade for? Is Vexus going to send her armies off to enslave another innocent planet?"

Tank looked at her as if she had just grown a second head. "_What?!?_ What do you mean, _enslave_? Where did you hear a bunch of garbage like that?!:"

"Jenny … the queen doesn't enslave robots, she _frees_ them," said Ro-bekka, with a look of disbelief on her face. "Just like how the Cluster freed _your_ planet, and every other planet that joins the Empire! How could you say something so horrible about the queen?!? She's the greatest robot leader in history!"

"Greatest leader in history?!?" Jenny was completely caught off guard; not only did they not think Vexus was evil, they thought she was a _hero_! Her processors raced, trying to make sense of the outpouring of love for a villain that had brought her life such misery. "But … I mean … uh, that is … you mean Vexus _doesn't_ conquer and enslave other worlds?"

"Of course not! Queen Vexus brings peace and freedom to every planet that joins the Cluster!"

"But what about freedom for the _humans_? She says that she wants to enslave the human race!"

Now Tank and Ro-bekka looked confused. "Umm … the queen has never said anything _like_ that," said Ro-bekka. "And what do you mean, 'freedom for humans?' You mean like _roaming_ free, in the wild?"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute." Now Jenny was even more puzzled. "What do you mean, 'in the wild'? I mean freedom, you know – freedom of speech, freedom to hang out, freedom to do what they want …"

"Freedom of _speech_? What are you talking about, Jenny? Humans _can't talk_."

Her pigtails nearly shot off of her head. "WHAT?!?"

"Well, okay, that's not completely true," said Ro-bekka. "One time, Tank and I went to the Royal Zoo, and we visited the human exhibit. They had this one funny little human trained to say "Cracker!" And I think he could say "Pretty boy", too.

"Huh, I knew a guy at school who had a pet human once," snorted Tank. "Stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. It couldn't talk. He couldn't even train it to stay off the furniture. And it was _messy_!"

Tank and Ro-bekka stared at Jenny as if she were suffering from a mental breakdown, and Jenny was beginning to wonder if she had slipped into some weird parallel universe. How in the world could any robot possibly think that Vexus was good? And how could they think that humans were just like animals? Sure, she'd heard Vexus and Smytus insult humans plenty of times. But her new friends weren't throwing vindictive insults. They were speaking about humans as if it were universally accepted fact. Jenny and Tank got into a heated squabble, with Jenny insisting that she'd seen humans talking, working, going to school, and living normal lives … and Tank insisting that she must be wrong, because everyone knew that humans were just _stupid animals_. Tank began to get quite animated in his argument …

And didn't notice the pair of sleek, dark hovercars streaking through the sky towards him.

Dot and Ro-bekka noticed the hovercars at the same time, and squealed in terror as an airborne collision seemed imminent. Tank snapped his attention back to his control sticks and jerked hard to the right, tilting his hover-convertible over into a sharp turn – but not sharp enough to avoid a jolting smack on the fender from one of the larger, bulkier hover-cars. They howled right past them, a pair of dark pewter blurs bearing the C-shaped gear on their doors, cutting across the skylanes with indifference to anything in their way. They didn't slow down, stop, or even acknowledge the accident; they just pitched over into a trajectory that led to the compound of Queen Vexus' palace.

The teenage robots gripped onto their seats for dear life, as the hover-convertible lurched wildly through the sky … but Tank was an expert driver, and his clamps were firm and steady on the control sticks. He calmly pulled out of the diving spiral, and brought his car back into level flight once more. As quickly as the little emergency had flared up, everyone was safe again, although a bit rattled from the experience. Jenny felt a flush of embarrassment as Tank pulled the car over into a stationary hover; she _could_ have simply popped out of the car on her pigtail-jets, and prevented the accident from ever happening. More than that, she had probably _caused_ the accident, by distracting Tank while he was driving.

She gulped hard, and her head sank into her shoulders with a _whirr_. "I'm sorry, Tank. I shouldn't have been arguing with you while you were driving."

"Don't worry about it," Tank growled, as he ran a systems check. "It wasn't your fault. Those maniacs came out of nowhere, and cut right across traffic like they owned the sky! Grumble, grumble …"

"Well, as long as we're all okay." Jenny leaned over the seat-back. "You guys all right back there?"

The three passengers in back had sprawled into a pile, and as Dot extracted herself from the mess, Jenny had to crack a smile. Drew had braced himself securely against the front seat, by growing a pair of leg-clamps. But his arms were wrapped around Allison's waist, who had been tossed sideways by the sudden gyrations of the car … and was now sitting comfortably in Drew's lap. She gradually regained her bearings, and reached up to pull her lavender hair-foil out of her eyes – and nearly died of embarrassment when she realized the position she was sitting in. For an awkward moment, Drew and Allison just looked at each other, as if neither or them were sure that they even wanted to move … then they realized that Jenny was staring right at them, with a knowing smile on her face.

"Yeah, looks like everyone's doing _just fine_ in the back seat," giggled Jenny.

Allison bolted out of Drew's lap. "No problems back here! Nope … ah … none at all!"

"Yup, all present and accounted for," Drew blurted nervously, with a guilty look on his face. "Ahh … umm … hey, maybe we should start thinking about a place to stay for the night!"

That was one of the most blatant change-the-subject lines Jenny had ever heard in her life, but it _was_ getting dark, and she realized that they could definitely use a place to rest, and decide upon a course of action. "Actually, I hadn't even thought about that. Are there any hotels around here?"

"There's hundreds of hotels," said Ro-bekka, "but I bet they're all filled up for Festival. What's the closest one, Tank?"

However, Tank wasn't paying attention to the rest of them – he was leaning over the windshield, on the verge of tears, gaping in horror at the damage to his car's paint job. "I don't believe it! Argghhh, I don't believe it! Thirty coats of wax, and now … it's ruined! Stupid Black Mantis robots! Big-shot Royal Security goons think they can just fly around anywhere they want, smashing up a piece of artwork like my custom SkyProwler GT! Just who do they think they are? If I could just get my clamps on them for ten seconds, I'd …. AUGH!" He collapsed into his seat, and gently stroked the dashboard. "Oh, my poor baby … my poor, poor baby … don't worry, baby, daddy's going to make everything all better …"

"Okay, Tank has gone off-line for a little while here," groaned his girlfriend.

"I think I might be able to help," smiled Allison, as she straightened herself up in her seat. Her hair whirled in a circle around the antenna on top of her head, once more forming a parabolic dish. As Drew watched in fascination, a computer panel unfolded from her forearm, and columns of data flew by in front of her eyes, too fast for him to make sense of. The message _Uplink Established_ appeared, followed shortly by _Task Complete_. "All right Jenny, I found you guys a room at the Royal Metropolitan Hotel, and made you a reservation for the rest of Festival week!" Then Allison's arm-panel retracted, and her dish collapsed back into a curtain of metallic foil

"Wow, now _that_ is a handy little feature," said Drew.

Dot leaned over with a devilish grin. "She's just _loaded_ with handy little features, Drew."

Allison and Drew blushed furiously, while Jenny and Dot enjoyed a satisfying round of laughter.

* * *

Brad nervously rubbed his neck, now free from his iron collar and chain, but still as much a prisoner as ever. He struggled to pull his feet from the heavy iron clamps that held his ankles, but the mechanical shackles wouldn't budge an inch. He was helpless to do anything but stand and watch, trapped on a conveyor belt that led into the livestock processing area of Stable Fifteen. His classmates stretched in front of him in single file, each with their feet locked into a similar pair of clamps; and beyond them, a row of hideous-looking equipment dangled from the ceiling on robotic arms, creating a nightmarish assembly line of torture devices. Brad's only consolation was that he stood at the back of the line. Then again, maybe that wouldn't be much consolation at all; he was going to have to watch all of his friends suffer before the robotic arms finally went to work on him.

From an elevated walkway, Omicron Fifteen gave one final look over the pathetic mammals, and once he was satisfied that everything was in order, he tossed a large knife-switch to activate the equipment. The conveyor belt jolted to life, slowly transporting the reluctant students into the processing area.

Miguel was the unfortunate soul standing at the front of the line, and he gazed in horror as the first pair of robotic arms dropped down on either side of him. The arms flexed like hoses, and each deployed a powerful brass nozzle; before he could prepare himself, Miguel was blasted with high-pressure sprays of cold water. He waved his arms frantically, trying to shield himself from the liquid onslaught, but the hoses were giving him a thorough soaking.

"All right, let's see if we can't get you monkeys cleaned up," sneered Omicron, sounding bored with the whole thing. He strolled along the walkway, keeping a disinterested eye on the equipment as a second student was carried into the washer. Another series of arms dropped down, tipped with rotary brushes and thuggish scrubbers. Jets of thick, soapy foam sprayed onto the students, and the scrubbers gave them a thorough, ungentle washing.

Stuck in the middle of the line, Brit turned around and gave Brad a withering stare. "Well, Brad, I thought you said everything was going to be _okay_. But these horrible clamp-thingies are getting nasty grease marks all over my new sling-back pumps from Rafael's! And I can't help but notice that your little wind-up sidekick appears to be _nowhere in sight_!" A murmuring chorus of _yeahs_ and _right-ons_ rose up from the students – at least the ones that weren't being blasted with water.

A bead of sweat trickled down the side of Brad's face. "Ahh … okay, I admit, this doesn't look very good right now. B-b-but I'm sure that Jenny's gonna show up any minute now! I mean … that's what she always does, right? Heh-heh … heh … she flies in and saves the day … just in the nick of time?"

"Oh, this ain't happenin'. _This ain't happenin'!!!_" wailed Tiff, on the verge of completely losing it. "The heck with waitin' for Miss Battery-Butt." She fumbled around in her skirt pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and started mashing buttons with her thumbs. "C'mon, c'mon, pick up, pick up … we gots an emergency going on here! I can't get water on my new long-sleeve silky tee! It's dry clean only! _Dry clean only!_ Aiiiigh, why is nobody answerin' nine-one-one?"

Brad slapped his forehead. "You're about five thousand light-years outside of your calling area, Tiff."

Standing directly in front of Brad, Sheldon ran his hands through his thick, greasy hair, nervously mumbling a series numbers to himself. "Okay … approximately seventy-two feet to the first set of arms … uh, moving at a rate of one and a half feet per second, give or take five percent …"

"Sheldon, what are you babbling about?" asked Brad.

"Just trying to figure out how much time we have left before we meet our doom."

"Oh, fer … what good does _that _do!?!"

"I don't know!" whined Sheldon. "I thought it might be nice to know! And math helps me calm down!"

Brit and Tiff unleashed a pair of high-pitched shrieks, as the conveyor moved them into the cold-water hoses, and the robotic nozzles soaked them with teeth-chattering spray. Then the brushes went to work, and after few horrific moments, they continued onward, looking like a pair of drowned cats. Tiff looked almost unrecognizable with the mascara scrubbed from her face. She wiped her dark hair out of her eyes, and shouted towards the ceiling. "Okay, robo-dork, you can fly in and save the day any time you want, now! Halp! Jenny! _Haaaalp!_"

Brad thought about trying to calm her down, but he and Sheldon were about to take their turn in the washer. The icy water was a shock to the system, like falling through the surface of a frozen pond. He clenched his eyes and mouth shut, and tried the cover his face with his arms, while the robotic brushes scrubbed him like they were trying to remove a layer of paint. Sheldon wasn't as fast, and emerged from the washing station spitting and sputtering, dripping wet and freezing cold. He pressed his thumb against his nostril, and blasted a glob of foamy soap out of his nose, heaving for oxygen once he could breathe again.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," gasped Sheldon.

Brad pushed a drenched swath of coppery hair out of his face, and smacked Sheldon in the back of the head. "Hey, don't you ever watch any movies? You're never supposed to say stupid stuff like 'that wasn't so bad', or 'it can't get any worse', because that's when …"

Right on cue, a shriek of pain arose from the front of the line. Brad craned his neck, trying to see what still awaited him on this assembly line of horror – and immediately reeled under a hurricane-force blast of wind. A drying unit blew dozens of high-velocity jets of air at him; he felt like his skin was going to peel off of his skull. Still the conveyor carried them relentlessly onward, offering them no chance to rest and collect their bearings. He blinked his eyes furiously, as he was carried through a curtain of fine white powder. Once through, he looked back to see what they had just been dusted with – and saw a huge tank labeled _Flea Powder_. "These stupid robots really _do_ think we're a bunch of animals!"

"You don't know the half of it!" shouted Sheldon, as he reached back and grabbed Brad by the vest to get his attention. Another robot arm dropped from the ceiling, with an attachment on its claw that looked like a supermarket pricing gun. The pricing gun maneuvered into position next to Sheldon's head, and he tried to twist away from it – but a mechanical claw clasped firmly around his neck, to hold his head steady. Sheldon squealed with pain as the gun bit into the fleshy part of his ear, and attached an identification tag to his earlobe. The arms repeated the procedure with Brad, and finally all the students were rolling towards the last station in the processing line, rubbing their sore ears.

"Owww, that really hurt," moaned Sheldon. "Geez, what else can they do to us?"

Brad shook Sheldon's shoulders in exasperation. "_Dude_, that's another one of those things you're never supposed to say! Now we're totally screwed."

He heard a series of desperate cries from the front of the line, as a final set of robot arms twisted down from the ceiling, their sections _whirring_ back and forth with clockwork precision. Each student was briefly held motionless in a set of mechanical restraints, while the robot arms grabbed a large steel collar from another conveyor belt, and snapped it around their neck. The tight-fitting collars were smooth and seamless, each beeping with a row of indicator lights. As the complex electronics inside of the collars activated, the light on the front glowed a soft green. Then the restraints around the students' ankles peeled back, releasing them from the conveyor belt.

But then Brad realized that something was horribly wrong. As each student was fitted with his collar, and released from the conveyor, they calmly and quietly walked over and stood in a line against the wall, where Omicron Fifteen was waiting for them. Miguel, Chloe, Jarvis, Millicent … each of them had a blank, vapid stare on their face, devoid of anger, fear, or any other emotion. Brit and Tiff received their collars, and staggered into the line in a trance-like stupor, almost as if they were sleepwalking …

"Yikes! They're some kind of mind-control devices!" shouted Brad, clutching his neck defensively.

"The correct term is _obedience collars_," smiled the ant-faced robot, as he took down the students' tag numbers on his clipboard. "I think you'll be quite surprised at how much you enjoy them. You'll feel calm, relaxed, and obedient … hmm, actually, you'll probably just feel obedient."

Sheldon winced in fear. "Oh, man … Brad, when those collars get clamped around our necks, we're gonna turn into a pair of zombie slaves! Oh, this is it! It really _can't_ get any worse than this!"

The screaming girl in front of Sheldon quieted down as soon as her obedience collar was snapped on. Then she rolled away, allowing the conveyor to move him into place. Powerful restraints closed around Sheldon's upper body. They had some difficulty pinning down his wildly thrashing arms, as he made a desperate and unsuccessful last-minute bid for freedom. Finally, the restraints closed around him, forming a thick metallic cocoon. The hydraulics surged through the mechanical arm, as it nimbly whizzed its claw around to the side conveyor, and picked up another steel collar. The collar snapped open, and the arm positioned itself in front of Sheldon's neck …

When a loud buzzer sounded through the stables, and the robotic arms came to a complete and unexpected halt. "Stop! Hold on! Stop the machines!"

Sheldon heaved a huge sigh of relief, and turned to see another ant-robot frantically running towards their group, waving a clipboard in his hands. He noisily clattered down the walkway, and ran up to a somewhat puzzled Omicron Fifteen. "What's the meaning of this?" demanded Omicron.

"I had to catch you before you finished processing the new arrivals," explained the messenger. "Have they all been collared yet?"

"All but these two," answered Omicron, gesturing towards Brad and Sheldon.

"They will have to do, then." The robotic messenger held up his clipboard for Omicron to read. "Just got an order in from the royal research labs. Some hot-shot scientist from the palace needs some fresh human specimens to use for his experiments. And he says he doesn't want them collared. Something about needing fresh, primitive human brain meat for the best results."

"Very well," huffed Omicron, "I don't care what happens to them. Slave labor, lab animals, cook them into a pie … as long as somebody signs for them."

The messenger ant-robot produced another set of collars and chains, and locked them tightly around the boys' necks. Brad gave Sheldon a furious glare. "Well, that's just great. Now instead of being turned into a couple of zombie slaves, they're gonna take us off to some laboratory – in the evil robot queen's palace! – and perform horrific, perverse, unspeakably painful experiments on us! You just had to say 'it can't get any worse than this', didn't you?!?"

"Sorry," squeaked Sheldon, as they were dragged towards a waiting transport.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Six / Seven Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	6. It's Smart, It's Safe, and It's The Law

A/N – Just wanted to quickly say thanks to everyone for reading, and thanks for all the reviews! Cluster Prime not quite what you expected, eh? Well, there's more developments yet to come …

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Six – It's Smart, It's Safe, and It's The Law

* * *

Their room at the Royal Metropolitan Hotel, like everything else Jenny had seen so far on Cluster Prime, was fantastic beyond anything she could have imagined. It was a full-fledged suite, with immaculately polished stainless-steel walls, comfortable rubberized floor carpeting, and a large bank of windows that gave a spectacular view of the capital's skyline. A thickly padded semi-circular sofa sat in front of a titanic video display, boasting 3-D capability and full-immersion stereo. The furniture was masterfully constructed from the finest brass and pewter, and was decorated with intricate strips of fine-gauge tubing; the recliner looked like a great place to curl up with a data disk for a late-evening read. Jenny sat her shopping bag down on the table, next to a complimentary gift basket of motor oil, bearing lubricant, and rust rejuvenator. "_Wow_ … just a _little_ bit nicer than my bedroom!"

Drew tossed his bag on the floor and dropped into the sofa, sinking deep into the foam cushions. He grinned and held up his finger, morphing it into a ClusterBank card. "Deluxe hotel room, 1250 credits. Shopping for research material at the mall, 225 credits. Two rounds of silicone smoothies for your new friends, 28 credits. Having Smytus pay for the whole thing – priceless."

Jenny folded her arms, and give him a disapproving smirk. "Isn't that sort of like, _stealing_?"

"The big gap-toothed lummox kidnapped us, sealed you in a titanium straitjacket, and locked me in a lunch pail! This is _poetic justice_. Besides, I figured we needed to do _something_ for money while we're stuck here." He flopped his head back and went completely limp, his arms and legs draped on the sofa like silver spaghetti. "Would you get a load of this room? It's like something a rock star would stay in. Hey, let's call room service!"

"Wow, a self-molding recliner with a deployable footstool!" Jenny jumped into the chair, eager to take a load off of her aching feet. Suddenly, the chair came to life, sending waves of soothing vibration through her chassis. "Oooooh … s-s-six kinds of s-s-servo massage … _ohhhhh_, D-d-drew, take my calls for m-m-me while I'm o-o-o-out."

Drew found the video remote, and the screen burst to life with spectacular graphics, filling the room with rich, vibrant sound. "You're watching RSPN, the Robot Sports Programming Network! Four hundred channels of robotic sports excellence, all day, every day! Coming up next … SportsServer caps the day's top stories, and keeps you up to the minute on the playoff races!"

"Four hundred channels of sports …" mouthed Drew, in a weak voice. "_Sniff_ … it's … it's more beautiful than I dared dream."

"We're not going to spend the night watching _robot football_," Jenny groaned, as she threw a foam-rubber pillow at his head. She bounced out of the recliner, and continued her exploration of the room's features. "Hey check it out, there's a fully stocked refrigerator! Eight types of anti-freeze … twelve grades of oil … _oooh_, even teeny bottles of Teflon lubricant! This room is absolutely _amazing_! Allison really came through for us. I wish there was something I could do to thank her." Then she snickered, and turned to Drew with a wicked smile. "I bet _you_ could think of a way to thank her."

"_Yeahhhhh_ …" he sighed, lost in a wonderful dream – " … I sure _could_." Then he caught himself, as the sound of Jenny's giggling snapped him back to reality. "Hey, what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Oh, _come on_," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're crushing on Allison, big time."

"I have _no idea_ what you're talking about," huffed Drew, a little too quickly.

Jenny squealed with delight at his brazen denial. "Drew Nabholtz, you big fat liar! You're lucky I'm equipped with a fire hose, because I think you're about to burst into flames. You were flirting with Allison all afternoon! And you two looked _pretty cozy_ in the back seat of Tank's hovercar."

"Wha … uh … I was just being _friendly_," he grumbled. Drew nervously skulked away to explore the rest of the room, eager for an escape. "All I'm sayin' is, it was really nice of her to take time to help us out, y'know, and I … er … was just trying to be … uhh … _polite_!"

She chased after him, having far too much fun to stop now. "_Suuuuure_ you were. And I couldn't help but notice that she was being polite _right back_."

"Well, I … _uhh_ … _ahhh_ … _brflbrbll_ …" He babbled incoherently, totally flustered and green-cheeked, while Jenny enjoyed an evil laugh at his expense. She was getting a _great_ deal of entertainment out of Drew at the moment. Finally, he gathered his senses, got his mouth untangled, and shot her nasty look. "Oh, _knock it off_, Jenny. Look … I'll probably never even see her again. Now do you want to finish checking out the room, or do you just want to horse around?"

"Lead on, Romeo," she laughed, following him into a smaller, adjoining room.

The secondary room was, in fact, a bedroom, but the two beds were unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Each was a flat platform, tilted about twenty degrees from the vertical, attached to a large pylon anchored to the floor. The bed was lined with a shiny foam padding, the same self-molding foam that covered the recliner; at the top of the bed was built-in pillow, ringed with electronics and a small display, like a computer screen. Sitting on the bed was a printed sign, bearing the hotel's logo. Jenny picked it up and read it aloud. "For your regeneration pleasure, your room is equipped with state-of-the-art SleepMaster 9000-Z rest platforms, with built-in diagnostic and backup function. Remember, at home or on the road, back yourself up every night! It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law."

"_Pass _– I don't think I want to leave a copy of my brain floating around in a computer somewhere," snorted Drew. "Hey, look, there's another room over here. It kind of looks like a _bathroom_. What the heck does a robot need with a bathroom?"

While Drew looked around the bathroom, Jenny stepped onto the sleep platform, experimentally letting her body sink into the firm but gentle foam. Within seconds, the bed had custom-molded to the exact shape of her robotic frame; it was the most relaxing, soothing material that she had ever rested on. She wiggled a bit to get comfortable, and stretched out her arms, feeling tiny _snaps_ and _clicks_ work free from the tiny gears in her joints. "Boy, I'm not going to have any trouble falling asleep on this thing!"

Drew's voice echoed to her from the bathroom. "Hey, Jen, there's a bathtub in here … but the faucets are labeled 'acid' and 'oil' instead of 'hot' and 'cold'! Isn't that nutty?"

"Sure … _whatever_ …" she murmured in a faraway voice, already feeling the stress evaporate away from her servos. She slid her hand along the side of the platform, and her fingers found a large pushbutton. Feeling curious, she pressed it. _Maybe this thing gives massages too …_

Suddenly the systems of the bed-platform came alive, and the electronic displays blinked to life with a faint series of _chirps_. Jenny felt a strange pulse of energy travel through her wires, and then she instantly fell into a deep, blissful sleep. With a soft _whirr_, motors in the pylon pivoted the entire bed, until Jenny had rotated to a horizontal resting position. While a contented smile grew on her peaceful face, a small door in the platform opened up, just above her pillow. From the concealed compartment, a curved metallic headband deployed, mounted on a flexible robotic arm, and slowly positioned itself directly above her forehead. The headband illuminated with a white light, as its electronic components warmed themselves up, and bathed Jenny's motionless form in soft, warm glow. Then it gently curled down to settle against her face, and the room filled with an electronic _hummm_ …

Drew casually strolled out of the bathroom. "Hey, if you want to take a bath, do it now, because I think I'm just gonna sleep in the tub tonight … _Holy crap!!!_"

The silver-green android launched himself across the bedroom and plowed into Jenny, knocking her out of bed and sending both of them tumbling against the wall. He frantically shook her shoulders, in a mild state of panic; but Jenny's eyes snapped open immediately, and just like that, she was restored to full alertness – and more than a little ticked off. "Cripes, Drew! What do you think you're doing? I just wanted to rest for a minute on that amazing bed … hey, wait a minute. How did it get all horizontal like that?"

They got back to their feet, and Drew showed her the metallic band that had clamped over her forehead. She didn't remember any of it. Then they noticed a flashing message on the small computer screen next to the pillow. It said _Backup Interrupted – Please Try Again._

"I … I guess they take backups pretty seriously here," she gasped, still amazed that she remembered nothing of the experience.

Drew carefully let his hands flow around the metallic headband; they shimmered with faint green patterns as his nano-computers tried to create an interface. "Sorry, Jenny – but I saw this thing stuck on your head, and you were totally _zonked out_. Hmmm … there's all kinds of activity going on in this thing. I don't really understand any of it, but I can tell you that the data is flowing in both directions. It reads _and_ it writes. I _guess_ that makes sense. If you're going to make a backup of a computer brain, then you might need to do a 'restore', too. It's probably harmless. Still …"

"Yeah, I think I'll sleep on the couch tonight," she gulped, suddenly feeling very uneasy. Something told her that she'd just had a very close call. She walked back into the main room, past the comfortable sofa in front of the giant video display, past the fully stocked fridge, past the massaging recliner with its magic fingers, and stood in front of the huge plate-glass windows. She raised a hand to the glass, and gazed out at the amazing view of the capital skyline, with its countless skyscrapers lit up in a nighttime rainbow of brilliant lights. It was one of the most beautiful sights that she'd ever seen in her life.

She saw Drew's reflection in the glass as he walked up behind her, but she didn't turn around. "This place is fantastic, wonderful, and _terrifying_ all at the same time," she said, in a saddened voice with a hint of shame. "It was so great to finally meet other robots like myself … that I almost forgot we're five thousand light-years from home, trapped on the home world of an evil empire. No matter how beautiful it seems, we know what the Cluster is really like. We know what Vexus is really like. We're in danger every second that we stay here … we _have_ to remember that, Drew."

He scratched his head, trying to think of something reassuring to say. "Well, at least Vexus and her goons aren't looking for us yet. All we have to worry about is avoiding Smytus. Just look out there at all those giant buildings, going on for miles and miles, and all those tens of millions of robots. There's _no way_ Horn-Head will ever find us in a city this big!"

Her pigtails drooped with a pained _whirr_. "And there's no way we'll ever find Brad and the others."

The unpleasant thought blanketed the room with a heavy silence, like a bitter winter frost. Jenny turned and leaned against the window, with an incredibly sad look on her face. Drew's shoulders sunk, and he fidgeted with his hands for a few seconds, staring into the artistic patterns on the rubberized carpet. Cluster Prime had been such an unexpected shock – and a not completely unpleasant one – that he'd forgotten all about his classmates. The last time they'd seen them, they had been marched off in chains to a Cluster military transport. Even now, they might be toiling under the whips of a Cluster slave master, or working as servants in some robotic big-shot's mansion … or something worse. Jenny and Drew were the only chance they had of seeing their homes and families again. They had to save the kids – even _if_ most of them thought they were a pair of metallic freaks.

"Well, we sure won't find them moping around like a pair of robot basset hounds," he said, slapping his hands together. "Let's see if we can't figure out how things _work_ here in paradise. You bought all those books-on-disc back at the Galleria, and I picked up a copy of every newspaper I could find. Which one do you want to start with?"

A tiny smile crept onto her face. "I got one called 'Glorious History of the Cluster Empire'. It might put me to sleep faster than that _bed_ did." She rummaged around in her shopping bag, opened the disk case … and put a thoughtful finger to her chin. "_Mayyyybe_ I should get you to look at it first, just in case there's some kind of freaky Cluster virus on it, or something. Heh-heh … after all, you're immune to Cluster assimilation. _Wow_, listen to me, I'm turning into a total paranoid."

Drew slid the disc into the side of his head. "Just because you're paranoid _doesn't mean_ that they're not out to get you," he chuckled. He picked up a copy of _Cluster Empire Today_, and tossed it to Jenny. "Shouldn't take too long to read. It's all written in barcode."

"I'll concentrate on the best way to find the kids," she said, as she configured her eyes for barcode scan. "You figure out how we're going to get back home. Mom didn't install any hyperspace engines in my body – I was only designed to save the Earth, so I guess she figured I didn't need them."

"Gee, thanks for giving me the _easy_ job," he groaned. "Maybe I'll just walk back to that military base and ask if I can borrow a spaceship for the weekend."

She gave him a sarcastic smile, then sank back into the recliner with the newspaper, scanning for any information she could find about humans or human slavery. "I just hope they can hold out long enough for us to find them," she sighed.

* * *

The rust-red cockroach drone entered the proper number sequence into the keypad, and the thick doors rolled apart with a mechanical rumble. Brad pressed his face against the door of his small, cube-shaped cage, trying to figure out where the robots were taking them now. They'd already been put on a hover-truck, and a train, and he was pretty sure they had been taken somewhere underground. He'd heard one of the insect-like robots mention something about arriving at the palace complex. He craned his neck to get a better view of the sign above the door … and snapped backwards, as a roach-drone slapped the side of the cage with his metallic claw. Brad sat back and sulked, as the robots transported him and Sheldon into a large, brightly lit room filled with strange-looking equipment. The roaches dropped each of the cages onto the floor with a loud _clang_, and clattered back into the hallway, joking about what that crazy scientist was going to do to _this_ pair of mammals.

Brad got to his knees – he couldn't stand up in the cage – and rubbed his sore rear end as he took a look around. They were in some kind of high-tech science lab, filled with fantastic-looking equipment and rows of computer screens. The air smelled of chemicals and ozone, and the background was awash with the _hum_ of power generators and chirping electronics. He leaned over and whispered towards his neighboring cage. "Sheldon! Sheldon, are you still there? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," answered a weak voice, trembling with anger and fear. "At least I will be, until I get sliced up like a bullfrog in a biology lab. _Ohhh_, face it, Brad, we're goners! Jenny's not coming to save us this time. Even as we speak, my sweet, sweet angel is being reprogrammed into a mindless puppet by an evil Cluster mad scientist! _Grrrr_ … when I think of that little creep, fiddling around inside Jenny's brain with his disgusting, skinny little claws …"

Suddenly Sheldon's rant was cut off by an annoyed, tinny voice coming from across the room. "Hey, monkey boy! My claws are _not_ skinny! They're slender. There's a _difference_! Show a little respect for a genius with a pan-dimensional hyper-brain, will you?"

A short red robot rolled up to the front of their cages on a single wheel, an egg-shaped fellow with six arms, six eyes, and a comically large head studded with antennas. Brad leaned up against the steel bars, and gave the robot a nasty stare. "Wait a minute, don't I _know_ you? Yeah … _yeah_, you're that weaselly little scientist from the Cluster starship! What did Jen call you? _Stanley!_"

Sheldon pointed an accusing finger through the bars of his cage. "You're the no-good schnook that locked my Jenny up in that horrible torture rack, and stuffed Drew in that little yellow barrel!"

"Quiet down, you two," growled Stanley, as he leaned forward to peer into Sheldon's cage. Then he inspected Brad, and his frown deepened, apparently unhappy with his latest specimens. "I ask for test subjects, and _these_ are the best they could send over? How am I supposed to produce miracle results when I'm working with substandard livestock? That does it! Next time, I custom-order. Sure, it costs a little more, but sometimes you've got to pay for quality."

Brad fumed at the implied insult … then snapped his fingers as a thought occurred to him. "Hold the fort! If you're the scientist super-geek from the starship, and this is your lab, that means that Jenny and Drew must be _in here_ somewhere!"

"Hey, that's _right_!" shouted Sheldon. "Where's Jenny, you motorized light bulb? Where is she?"

Stanley smacked the cage door with his clipboard. "_Arrrgh_, not only do they send me the runts of the litter, but now I have to put up with the _yakitty-yakitty-yakkity_! You think you could possibly be more annoying, maybe? What's the deal with you two … what do you want, food? The stupid roaches probably didn't feed you. All right, all right, hold onto your mouth-flaps, I'll get you some food. _Sigh_, you gotta do everything yourself around here."

The bulbous little robot zipped over to a set of lockers, and loaded up all six of his arms with feeding apparatus. Then he wheeled back to his new lab animals, and attached water bottles to the doors of their cages. He set a pair of aluminum bowls on the floor, and gripped a large food bag with four of his arms, struggling to rip the top open. Brad made a disgusted face as he read the bag's label ... _Human Chow – New and Improved Algae Flavor!_ Stanley filled the bowls with dry, crusty brown-green pellets, and slid them inside the cages via a slot in the doors.

"Aww, gross!" sneered Brad. "Do you seriously expect us to _eat_ this garbage?"

"What, you're some kind of gourmet, now?" huffed Stanley. "Eat up, monkey boy, it's fortified with eleven vitamins and minerals. It'll give you a wet nose, healthy gums, and a nice, shiny coat! Look, if you don't like algae, I've got two other flavors … 'Crunchy Insect' and 'Soylent Green'."

"_Yuck_, I'd rather eat mystery meat from the school cafeteria!" Brad sat against the back of his cage, and folded his arms defiantly. "You may have us locked up in cages, but that doesn't mean you can treat us like animals! We're _human beings_! We're just as intelligent as you are, and we deserve to be treated with a little decency! We're not going to touch your stupid puke-food, are we Sheldon?"

The only reply from Sheldon's cage was a loud, moist crunching sound. Brad and Stanley stared at Sheldon with nauseated amazement, as he happily dug into his bowl of algae-flavored kibble. "Hey, I was hungry!" he mumbled, spraying chunks of food all over the floor. "And this stuff doesn't taste half bad. And when you pour water into the bowl, it makes gravy!"

Stanley rolled all six of his eyes. "Oh, for the love of … look at you, you're getting crumbs all over the place! Disgusting humans – hang on, I'll get some fresh newspaper to line the cages …"

But then the lab was pierced by loud electronic beeping, coming from Stanley's desk. The egg-shaped robot managed to heave all six of his shoulders at once, and sighed in frustration at the latest interruption to his valuable research. He tossed his clipboard onto a workbench, and rolled to his desk to activate a large viewing screen. The picture came to life with a harsh warrior's face – and again, it was a face that Brad recognized from earlier in the day. It was the big robot commander from the starship, the robot who had kidnapped them all and brought them to Cluster Prime.

"Scientist, this is Commander Smytus," he said, in a voice considerably softer than his usual grandiose tone. He was almost _whispering_ into the screen. "Scientist, report! What is your status? Have you spoken to the queen or any of her guards yet?"

Stanley shook three of his six fists with frustration. "Have I spoken to them? Have I _spoken_ to them?!? Queen Vexus has been calling every two hours since I got back here! You'd better have some good news, Chuckles, because I don't know how much longer I can keep covering for your sorry metal butt! So have you found her yet?"

"Cool your circuits! I, Smytus – Destroyer of Worlds! – shall find those blasted teenagers … it is only a matter of time!" His eyes darted left and right, checking to make sure that he wasn't being overheard. "Listen, I have a meeting with the queen in five minutes. She's going to ask me about XJ-9. We need to make sure we keep our stories straight!"

The scientist groaned, and clasped three hands to his huge, transparent dome-head. "All right … I told the queen that XJ-9 is here in the lab, she's powered down, but I found a _whole_ bunch of booby traps inside of her body. I said her self-destruct mechanism is armed, she's a ticking time bomb, the whole lab could go _kablooey_ at any minute, _yada yada yada_ … it's _much_ too dangerous for the queen to come down here! She's buying it for now, but Vexus is no fool, Commander! You'd better find that little robot chickie soon, or else … it's the recycling bin, for both of us!"

"Shhhhh! Keep your voice down!" hissed the giant robot. "Just keep up the act, for now. My own squad of roach-drones are scouring the city for her, and her slimeball friend. They can't run forever!"

Then the screen abruptly faded to black, and Stanley bolted away from his desk, grumbling to himself. "They can't run forever, he says … well, that makes me feel a _whole lot_ better! Stupid gear-head, glory hog, over-decorated paper pusher … _arrrrrghhh_!"

The super-genius rolled back to get his clipboard from the workbench, mumbling and fuming with anger and anxiety … and noticed that his new lab animals were smiling back at him. "And just what are you two so happy about, _hmmm_?"

"They _escaped_, didn't they?" laughed Brad. "Jenny and Drew got away, and ol' Smitey-pants Fat-bottom is out there trying to find them, isn't he?!? Ha, ha, ha! All right, Jen! Sheldon, did you hear that? Jenny and Drew got away!"

Stanley was already in a poisonous frame of mind. He'd suffered through the Earth robots' escape, he'd lied to the queen, and he'd put up with Smytus' insufferable arrogance. He was in no mood to take any guff from a pair of barely-evolved naked apes. "Oh, you think that's funny, do you? Well, go right ahead, laugh it up. You two meatbags better enjoy yourselves while you can, you should!"

"Wh-what's that supposed to mean?" asked Sheldon.

"I guess you humans really aren't that bright after all!" taunted Stanley. He opened a drawer, and took out a pair of blank labels. He stuck one on the top of Sheldon's cage door, and wrote the number '35' on it. "What do you think I ordered a pair of lab animals for? You think I'm going to dress you up, and have a little tea party? This is a _research lab_. And while Commander Smytus plays hide-and-seek with your little robot friends, I have scientific experiments to perform. After all, now that I finally have a stable sample to work with, I'm hoping to make some real breakthroughs!"

"Stable sample? Stable sample of what?" asked Brad, suspiciously.

Stanley stuck a label on Brad's cage too, and gave it the number '36'. Then he tapped a few buttons on a desktop control panel, and a door slid open on top of the workbench. A platform slowly rose up from below – holding a small cylinder about the size of a thermos. Its sides were transparent, revealing the magnetic bottle that was contained within it – and inside the bottle hung a small, shapeless blob of silvery molasses, twisting and spiraling with slow, fluid patterns, like a lava lamp.

"Nanobots, from your android friend," smirked Stanley. "See, I wasn't sure if Queen Vexus was going to have him destroyed or not, so I took a little sample ahead of time, just to be on the safe side. I've never understood how my nanobots turned a _human_ into a _robot_, or how they evolved into a stable, independent mind, what with the personality, and the free will, and everything! I've worked on the problem for months, trying to duplicate the result, and always I come up a little bit short. But _a-ha_, I've been analyzing _these_ nanobots all day, and the lab computers are working nonstop to decode the fancy-schmancy software in all of those itty-bitty nano-computers. In the morning, I'll be ready to start a whole new round of human-injection experiments!"

Brad wasn't sure what that meant, but Sheldon's jaw dropped open in excitement. "Injection? You're going to inject us with nanobots? You're going to turn us … into _robots_, like Drew?"

"Well, that would be the _best-case_ scenario," chuckled Stanley. His eyes flitted to a storage rack at the side of the lab, and his chuckles grew into a stream of sadistic, evil laughter.

The sign on the rack read _Experiment Storage_. Its shelves held rows of identical transparent cylinders, designed to store the results of Stanley's lab experiments. Each cylinder contained a shapeless gray lump of moist, chalky, lifeless sludge, with textures varying from pudding to concrete. And all the cylinders had labels attached to them … in numerical order, from one to thirty-four.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Seven / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	7. Interruptions, Interruptions

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seven – Interruptions, Interruptions

* * *

The skies above the capital glowed an enthusiastic crimson on this first morning of Festival, and the crisp breeze seemed to give a storybook quality to the long flowing banners hanging from the facade of the Royal Metropolitan Hotel. The entry way was decorated with patriotic red-and-green bunting, and hundreds of colorful flags lined the stainless-steel archways. An excited mob of robot tourists ran, rolled, and hovered out the grand front doors, eager to get their celebrations underway. Most of the robots checked the lenses on their holo-cameras, or chased after their over-excited children with bottles of anti-corrosive. But off to the side of the circular plaza, Jenny and Drew were discussing their own strategies for the day. After a long night of reading up on Cluster Prime, they were brainstorming plans for finding their kidnapped classmates, and safely escaping back to Earth. Jenny had deployed a scanning screen from her elbow, and she was fine-tuning its settings while Drew peered over her shoulder.

"… and Connie, and Miguel. There, I've entered all the kids' DNA patterns into my scanner. Now I can search for their bio-signatures, once I'm within range – assuming this thing will even work in the middle of all these skyscrapers." She folded her arms with a tired groan, trying not to focus on how impossible the task at hand seemed to be. "I've got a copy of the city map loaded into my memory banks, and I have a few ideas on where to start looking. You have any luck finding us a way home?"

"Not really," sighed Drew. "There's a commercial spaceport, but it's not like you can walk up to the counter and buy thirty tickets for Earth. And even if you could, we don't have Cluster passports … and a lot of the spacelines won't even allow humans on board. Strict policy – No Pets Allowed. I wonder how far we could get if we rented a hover-bus …"

"Hey, wait a minute," she said, suddenly distracted. She eyed him suspiciously, sensing something different about him … "Did you do something to your hair?"

"_Wha?_" Drew feigned ignorance, and gave her a annoyed growl. "Jenny, we're trying to find our friends and escape an evil robot planet. And you're asking me if I changed my _hair_?"

"Well, _did you_?" she pressed, smiling mischievously.

Jenny was discovering that Drew was a lot of fun when he was on the defensive, and she giggled as he ran a hand through his tussled silver bangs. It was no coincidence that her android friend had taken a sudden interest in his appearance, and while the urge to tease was overwhelming, she decided to give him a break. "Oh, take it easy, Drew, I'm just giving you a hard time. I know you had fun with Allison yesterday. So did I – I _really enjoyed_ spending time with her and Dot over at the mall. I've never had a chance to hang out with other robot girls like that before … it meant a _lot_ to me."

Her confession made him feel a bit more at ease; it was nice to know he wasn't the only one struggling with an uncomfortable mix of happiness, fear, and guilt. "Don't worry, Jenny, I know we need to concentrate on getting back home. It's just that yesterday … Jen, it was a nice change to spend a couple of hours with a girl like that, y'know? I …" – he lapsed into dreamworld – "… I really _enjoyed_ it."

The hotel plaza buzzed with pedestrian activity as hundreds of robot tourists _clanked_ towards the monorail stops a block to the south. Taxis and hover-buses glided through the air, slipping in and out of the morning traffic. Jenny saw several hovercars jostling for one of the few street-level parking spots … including, to her pleasant surprise, a familiar red SkyProwler GT convertible, carrying a familiar group of robotic teenagers! Tank, Ro-bekka, Allison, and Dot had come back to the hotel to surprise them! She clasped her hands to her mouth in joy, managed to suppress a squeal, and quickly waved _come-on-over_ – all while Drew kept staring off in the other direction with a faraway gaze, oblivious to everything around him. Jenny had a deliciously evil idea, and turned back to Drew with an expression of pure innocence on her face. "_Sooooo_ … you really liked Allison, didn't you?"

He shrugged. "Well … sure, she was smart, and funny, and easy to talk to …"

"Easy to talk to. _Uh-huh_," she grinned. "I liked her hair-foil. It was the prettiest shade of blue."

"It wasn't blue, it was _purple_." Then his eyes grew hazy again. "Actually, it was more of a _violet_ … _sigh_ … a deep, rich, royal violet, like the evening sky just as the last embers of twilight fade away, and the stars come out to sprinkle across the heavens like a million glistening diamonds …"

"Wow," giggled a female voice. "I was thinking of getting a repaint, but now I've changed my mind!"

In a state of complete and utter horror, Drew whirled around to see Allison and Dot standing directly behind him, fighting back tidal waves of laughter. While his face exploded into twenty different shades of green, the girls exchanged squeals and hugs with Jenny, who bounced with delighted surprise at seeing her new friends again. She clasped Allison's hands in hers, beaming with ecstasy. "This is so awesome – I didn't think I was ever going to see you guys again! What are you doing here? Aren't you guys heading off to Vexus' palace for the opening ceremonies, like everyone else?"

"Oh, Tank is super eager to get there for the military parade," said Allison. "We're just going along for the ride. Anyway, Dot and I were talking on the video-phone last night …"

"We were deciding what to do today," interrupted Dot. "And we realized _you guys_ were alone, and new in town, and we were wondering, well, maybe you'd like to come along with us!"

A pang of guilt stabbed Jenny through the chest like an iron spear. Here she and Drew were total strangers on Cluster Prime, and they had just met Allison, Dot, and Tank yesterday; and yet they had gone out of their way to come back to the hotel, and invite them to join their holiday celebration. She knew she had to turn them down. Not only did she have to focus on finding her human classmates, but she and Drew were still fugitives on Cluster Prime, and it didn't seem like a good idea to go watch a parade filled with Vexus' soldiers, in the very shadow of her fortress. Jenny rubbed the back of her neck, and smiled regretfully. "Wow, Allison, Dot … that is so awesome of you guys to invite us, but …"

Suddenly a shrill _beep-beep-beep_ rang out, and Jenny instinctively looked to her belly-bolt, before realizing that the beeping was actually coming from Allison's left arm. Allison's rounded shoulders sunk, and a look of disgust and defeat came over her face. With a heavy _sigh_, she tapped a flashing light on her forearm, and a panel unfolded, rapidly rotating into a circular viewscreen. A stern metallic face materialized, his eyes and mouth-grill forming the very picture of an emotionless automaton. "LSN-1482, this is LSN-1199," droned his voice, in a drab monotone. "LSN-1482, acknowledge."

"Oh, for …" Allison slapped her forehead in anger and frustration. "Dad … okay, we talked about this last night, remember? Could you try calling me 'Allison'? Huh? Just once? Try it and see how it rolls off the old voice processor? 'Allison'?"

"During duty hours, all LSN droids are to refer to each other by their assigned serial numbers," droned Allison's father, with an authoritative tone to his voice. "Standby to receive your next LinkSysNet assignment, LSN-1482."

"_What?!?_" Allison shouted in disbelief. "Wait! Hang on! 'Pause' button! This is my day off! I worked extra nights this week so I could have the first day of Festival off with my friends! Dad, this isn't fair!"

"Duty always comes first to an LSN droid," he responded, condescendingly. "Now, there is a problem with a data processing node at Skylane Traffic Control, Station Fourteen. All available traffic units are busy clearing airspace for the Royal Air Show. Head over to STC Station Fourteen and resolve the problem, immediately! That is an order, LSN-1482." And without giving her a chance to reply, he signed off, and the screen faded to black.

"_Auuughhh!_" she groaned, balling her slim hands into a pair of fists. She looked at Jenny with a pained sadness in her eyes. "My dad," she said weakly. "He's really only like that when he's on duty. And he's right … _sigh_ … duty comes first when you're an LSN droid. I have to bail, guys."

"Aww, that really strips my gears!" fumed Dot. "Can't you just ditch, and come with us anyway?"

Jenny smiled and shook her head. "She can't, Dot. She has to look after her responsibilities – even if they are kind of _lame_, sometimes." The whole episode filled Jenny with a sense of _déjà vu;_ it was the first time, however, that she'd ever seen it happen to someone else. "Don't worry about it, Allison – if I had a nickel for every time my mom's done that to me, I could buy Queen Vexus' palace. I know just how you feel right now." And she truly did; Allison had the same _why-me_ look on her face that was only too familiar to the teenage superhero.

A city map with a flashing light displayed on her screen, before it collapsed and stored itself back in her forearm. "Well, I guess I'll just catch a hover-taxi, since this is official Cluster business, and all. You guys go on and have fun – maybe I'll catch you later." She _clanked_ a few steps towards the street, dragging her feet as if she were headed off to the recycling yards …

When Drew raised his voice. "Allison … wait! Uh … hold up. Umm … look, I really wasn't interested in watching a boring old parade. If it's not too much trouble … would you mind if I came with you to see what a Traffic Control Station looks like? It sounds like it … might be interesting."

Jenny was nearly knocked back on her heels with surprise, and she gave her silver-green friend a bemused smirk. Neither one of them could quite believe he'd actually had the nerve to speak up. "Suddenly developed an interest in traffic control, Drew?" she smirked.

"Hey, she's going to some Cluster computer center that controls air traffic, right?" he whispered. "So I might learn more about what kind of ships fly back and forth into the city. It's actually not a bad place for me to start looking for a way to get us home."

"_Sure_, good thinking," she smiled, _almost_ believing his rationale. "If you find anything, give me a call, or meet me back to the hotel. And Drew … _be careful._" She meant that in more ways than one.

And with a nod and nervous gulp, Drew jogged off to catch up with Allison, whose mood had brightened considerably in the past ten seconds. Jenny and Dot shook their heads, watching the two robots exchange awkward greetings and clumsy hand gestures, before finally making their way towards the curb to flag down a hover-taxi. As Drew tried to figure out how to open the taxi's door for Allison, Jenny fought back a giggle; she couldn't decide whether they looked incredibly cute or incredibly pathetic.

"Well, we're not going to see _them_ for a while," snorted Dot, rolling her eyes. The girls walked towards Tank's red hovercar, idling patiently a short distance away. Dot asked Jenny what her plans were for the first day of Festival, and Jenny managed to explain that she wasn't going to the opening ceremonies –military parades weren't really her thing. To her relief, and pleasant surprise, Dot voiced similar feelings; she was only interested in hanging out with friends, and didn't much care for the crowds and noise that were sure to be at the palace. They decided to strike off on their own for the rest of the day. Jenny was thrilled to have her for company; it would be easier navigating the city with someone who knew her way around. And besides, she thought that Dot was hilarious.

"Ready for the big show, ladies?" grinned Tank, as he polished the front fender of his SkyProwler. Ro-bekka seemed less than thrilled, as she checked herself in the mirror.

"Actually, Tank, if it's all right with you, Dot and I are going to take a rain check on the parade. We're heading over to the Royal Zoo." From her readings last night, Jenny had found nothing about human slavery on Cluster Prime, and surprisingly little information about humans at all. One place she was sure to find some humans was the Primate Preserve at the Royal Zoo; one of the most popular displays was the human exhibit. It was a horrible thought, but it certainly was possible that some of the kids from Tremorton High had been sent there as zoo animals.

"Suit yourself," he said, "it's going to be awesome. The new Stealth Hornet fighter is doing a flyby, and the Golden Beetles are going to put on their precision flying routine. Oh, and the Elite Pilot Corps from Queen Vexus' private guard will be there, too – the Black Mantis robots! They're fantastic!"

"Black Mantis, huh? Wouldn't think you wanted to cheer them on, after what they did to your hovercar yesterday." Jenny glanced at the huge scrape that still blemished the paint on the SkyProwler's fender. Tank had nearly blown his fuses when he saw how his "baby" had been defaced; he'd been so mad that she'd thought he was going to chase down Vexus' personal thugs himself.

"Uh … what are you talking about, Jenny?" asked Tank. "That happened in the Galleria parking lot."

Jenny blinked her eyes in amazement. "Tank … Drew and I were _in your car_ yesterday afternoon, flying by Queen Vexus' palace, when a pair of black hovercars nearly plowed right into us! We spiraled out of control and dropped a thousand feet – it's not the sort of thing you forget! Those Black Mantis guys nearly killed us! Tank, I was _there_!"

"Doesn't sound like something the Black Mantis would do," he said, arching a quizzical eyebrow. "After all, Jenny … they're the _good guys_." Then he waved goodbye, and his red hover-convertible wafted into the sky on its anti-grav engines, turning into the heavy Skylane traffic for the palace complex.

Jenny clanked her hands on her hips as she watched Tank's car disappear from view. She was having the same twilight-zone feeling that she had yesterday. Either Tank had just blatantly lied to her – or he actually didn't remember. _Cluster Prime just gets weirder and weirder_, she thought.

* * *

The underground laboratory echoed with the whine of electric generators, as Stanley brought the equipment up to maximum power. His six hands danced over a dizzying array of gauges, knobs, and switches, while he monitored his experiment's status on a bank of large computer screens. Rivers of bizarre computer symbols flowed in front of him, a flood of data that represented the night's work by the supercomputers. Then he rubbed his hands together with glee, and grasped a pair of remote control joysticks. With a flick of the wrist, he brought a robotic arm down from the ceiling, and positioned it above the thermos filled with the gurgling nanobot sample. A large syringe extended from the end of the arm, plugged into the thermos, and filled itself with shiny, silvery goo. Then the triple-jointed robot arm maneuvered towards a tall transparent tank … and the panicking, pimpled guinea pig trapped inside.

Sheldon pounded frantically on the walls of the narrow cylinder, but the thick glass wouldn't budge. Sweat poured down his cheeks as his hubcap-sized eyes nervously watched the robot arm come to a stop directly over his tank. He swallowed hard, forcing a huge lump down his throat. "S-s-so what are you going to do with that thing?" he asked, pointing to the syringe over his head.

"Well, I'm not giving you a flu shot," Stanley chuckled. He called up a complex program on one of his monitors, and frantically typed away on four keyboards at once. "I'm going to inject these reprogrammed nanobots into your mooshy human flesh, and if everything goes according to plan, they'll start nibbling on your insides, atom by atom, and they'll make _trillions_ of copies of themselves!"

Sheldon tugged at his moist T-shirt. "A-a-and then I'll really be turned into a robot?"

A circular section at the top of the cylinder hissed open. The robot arm dropped inside, and pointed the syringe directly at Sheldon. "According to my calculations, there's _definitely_ a one in 280,000 chance that you'll stabilize into a nanobot-android like your squishy silver friend."

"One in _two hundred and eighty thousand_!?!?" screamed Sheldon, as the syringe slid closer.

Stanley shrugged all six of his shoulders. "Hey, not great odds, I know, and most likely you'll be reduced to a quivering blob of slimy gelatin … but that's a risk I'm willing to take!" He grasped his remote controls again, and re-positioned the needle filled with silver death, preparing to plunge it into his test animal. Sheldon lurched and twisted out of the way, like a rodent evading a deadly cobra …

Brad gritted his teeth and braced himself against the back of his cage, then kicked at the door with all his might – but no amount of adrenaline was going to bust his cage open. Frustrated and tired from lack of sleep, he shook the door as hard as he could. "Knock it off, you sicko! This is seriously _uncool_! You … you can't just turn him into a metallic mudpie like this!"

The genius-bot paused for a second … and then slapped his massive forehead. "You know something? You're absolutely right!" He took a green holographic crystal from his desk drawer, and plugged in into a socket on his console. "I forgot to turn on the silly data recorder first. _Ha, ha_ … where was my head?!? Nice catch, monkey boy! Okay, _now_ I can turn him into a metallic mudpie."

The syringe-arm lunged at Sheldon again, but he dropped to the floor just in time to avoid the needle. He curled up in a fetal position, scared out of his wits, while the robot arm backed off and deployed a set of laser crosshairs. A glowing red "X" illuminated on Sheldon's quivering bottom. The needle took aim, and the syrupy nano-goo swirled with anticipation, ready to consume the organic tissue …

When the laboratory door abruptly _swooshed_ open, revealing two roach-drones silhouetted against the lighted hallway. They _clanked_ in, with foul expressions on their faces, and impatience in their mechanical swagger. Stanley threw his hands up in a huff, and wheeled away from his control station to deal with the intrusion into his scientific sanctuary. "What's the meaning of this? Look, I'm trying to make with the important research in here. Come back later!"

But the red roach-drone struck an intimidating pose, and glared down at the diminutive genius with a nasty sneer. "Silence, scientist. We have been sent here from the throne room by Queen Vexus herself!"

"She grows very impatient for news of XJ-9's assimilation," added the green drone. "She expects her to be prepared for today's Festival ceremonies!"

Stanley's mouth-grill nearly fell off of his egg-shaped body. "The _throne room_!?! Queen _Vexus_!?! Well, why didn't you say so?" His arms flailed about fretfully; his dome-lights flashed in frantic patterns as he tried to figure out how to talk his way out of this one. If the queen found out that XJ-9 had escaped, he was _robotic toast_. "Uh … heh-heh … come in, come in, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable!"

"Negative, we must report back to the queen immediately," said the red drone.

The green drone scanned the lab, then gave Stanley a suspicious look. "Where _is_ XJ-9?!? We were told to observe her current status. However, I don't see any robot girl in here _at all_!"

Stanley was really starting to panic now. "Wha … of course she's here! She's just … ah … getting a nice, fresh coat of primer right now! In a side room. That's locked. That you can't look at." His antennae twitched nervously, as the roach-drones exchanged a skeptical look …

"Hey, roach-face!" shouted Brad. "Egghead there is lying through his fuse box. I know where she is!"

The red drone spun his head around, and saw Brad's face grinning out at him from his tiny cage. The six-foot cockroach peered inside, growling with menace at the puny mammal crouching within. He gave the human his best threatening stare – but Brad simply smiled back, with his hands behind his back. "Pathetic meat creature!" roared the drone. "Tell me where the XJ-9 robot is located."

"Let me out of this stupid cage," smiled Brad, "and I'll _show_ you."

The roach-drone ripped the door open, and grabbed Brad roughly by his shirt collar. Ignoring Stanley's protests, the drone hauled Brad out of the cage and held him up to his face, glaring into the human's moist, jelly-filled eyeballs. "Now, primate, show me where the robot girl is, _right now_!"

"_Sheesh_, all right, all right, relax," grinned Brad. "Dude, I think you need to _cool off_."

None of the robots had noticed the water bottle that Brad was hiding behind his back; he'd pried it off of his cage door while they were arguing. With a quick motion, he twisted off the top, and dumped the liquid contents over the drone's head. The water splashed into the stunned robot's eyes and mouth, and suddenly his metallic body was racked with convulsions. Short-circuits sizzled with bright yellow flashes, crackling like a string of firecrackers. Brad wormed his way out of the roach's grasp and dropped to the floor, rolling clear just as the drone toppled over onto its back, twitching its legs and arms in mechanical spasms.

"Oh, great, my test human is loose!" shouted Stanley. "Quick, grab him, you idiot!"

Brad was rather pleased with himself at the moment, but that was as far as his master plan went. The second drone advanced on him, flexing its four sinister clawed hands, and Brad had to think fast. He dove behind the steel workbench, hoping to buy a few seconds to think; his nervous eyes darted left and right, desperately scanning the lab for something to use as a weapon. The roach-drone dropped to the floor, an awkward position for its top-heavy build, and grumbled with irritation as it groped under the workbench for the escaped lab animal. Its dark metal claws snapped ever closer …

"_Yikes!_" Just as a claw caught the fringe of his pant leg, Brad jumped onto the top of the workbench, frantically climbing onto the steel table next to Stanley's workstation. But the table's surface was smooth and slippery, and to Brad's surprise, his legs shot out from under him. He fell backwards into a large tabletop scanner … clumsily swinging his arms into the nanobot thermos.

The scanner tipped over and fell on top of the green drone's head with a deafening _crash_. The nanobot thermos spiraled into the air … and Stanley gasped in horror. He frantically wheeled under the thermos like a center fielder tracking down a fly ball, and caught it inches before it hit the floor. "You stupid, clumsy monkey!" he shouted. "You nearly turned us all into nano-slime!"

The red drone, now recovered from his short circuits, helped his green partner back to his feet. They seethed with fury at the teenage boy who was _quickly_ becoming more trouble than he was worth. The red drone's antennas glowed with a crimson light, and unleashed a sizzling laser blast towards Stanley's workbench. Brad scrambled out of the way just in time, feeling the heat from the laser bolt as it ricocheted past his arm – and he fell on top of Stanley's master control panel.

"_Aiiighhh!_ My controls!" gasped Stanley. "Get your fleshy fingers off of those controls, you stupid air-breather! That panel operates a lot of dangerous lab equipment!"

"_Does_ it now?" Brad grinned, cracked his knuckles, and started pushing buttons like crazy.

A dozen robotic arms dropped from the ceiling, bristling with all sorts of nasty equipment, instantly turning the laboratory into a nightmarish danger room. The roach-drones jumped back as a pair of whirling drill-bits narrowly missed them, and plunged into the floor. A surgical saw screamed up to speed, and whirled over Brad's head, close enough to snip off a piece of hair. A long, sharp probe swung through the air like a dagger, and slammed into a metal barrel, nearly impaling Stanley. Now Brad was starting to freak out a little bit. "_Ahhh_ … no problem, folks … ehh … maybe this little red lever shuts everything off?" He reached up and tossed a large red knife-switch …

Stanley dodged another rotary saw, holding his nanobot thermos safely above his head – and saw what Brad was doing. "Not that switch, you poop-flinging idiot! That's the …"

Another large arm pivoted down from the ceiling, this one tipped with a five-foot laser drill. The tip of the laser grew a brilliant ruby red – and then chaos broke loose in the lab. A thin beam of pure crimson burst forth with a high-pitched shriek, burning a hole into the floor as if it were made of butter. The beam shot right between the startled roach-drones – making them even angrier. The drones charged at Brad, and the teenager scrambled on top of the control panel, desperately trying to escape. Then he noticed that the laser apparatus was hanging just a few feet over his head. He jumped as high as he could, wrapped his arms around the smooth laser barrel … and slid off.

That sent the laser drill spinning in wild circles, carving a swath of destruction through the lab. Brad fell to the floor with a heavy _thud_, and clutched his hands over his head. Stanley dodged the deadly beam once, twice, trying to wheel his way back towards his control panel. Computer screens exploded as the laser tore through them. The workbench was sliced neatly in two, like a block of cheese. The beam swirled around like the grim reaper's scythe – and sliced the heads off of the stunned Cluster drones. Their bodies collapsed, their severed heads rolled onto the floor, and the laser spun onwards, heading towards the glass tank. Sheldon dropped to his knees, and the beam screeched inches over his head, cutting the cylindrical prison in half. Glass and metal crashed all around the lab as the powerful laser ran amok …

And then finally fell silent. Stanley had managed to get back to his control panel, and shut the laser off. He glared down at Brad, still lying dazed on the floor, and his eyes glowed with murderous rage. The rotund little robot reached down and wrapped his fingers around Brad's throat …

Then he heard a fizzling, gurgling sound … and felt something dribbling down one of his arms.

The nanobot thermos had a hole punched through it, and gooey silver nano-fluid was leaking out of the container. Then the thermos broke in half … spilling a thick, silvery paste all over Stanley's body. The diminutive scientist shrieked in terror – he was covered in his own hideous nanobots.

"No! No, this can't be happening! Quick, monkey boy, do something! Get me a doctor! Get me a mechanic! Anything! Oy … I hate irony!"

Brad pulled free from Stanley's failing grasp, and backed away as he flailed his arms in panic. Creeping tendrils of shiny goo spread across his domed head, and the amorphous blob pulsed with shimmering waves of silver-green. In seconds, the nano-mass had completely consumed him, and he looked like a huge stainless steel egg, balanced on a tiny silver wheel. Sheldon crawled free of his glass tube, and joined Brad to watch Stanley's final moments with morbid fascination. The nano-sludge vibrated with nervous energy, as if it were about to lash out … then it stopped, and began to deteriorate into a lump of raw materials. Moments later, all that remained of the Cluster genius was a pile of fine gray ash.

Sheldon patted his arms and legs, making sure he was still healthy and human, and pumped his fist in the air triumphantly. "Yessss! We did it! Ha, serves you right, you robotic Frankenstein! Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof, woof! We let the dogs out! We're _free_!"

But Brad just pushed his hair back out of his eyes, moist with sweat as he fought to catch his breath, and shook his head at the dancing nerd's antics. "Sheldon, let's just do a little reality check. We're two humans trapped in a mad scientist's lab, hundreds of feet underneath an evil robot queen's palace, on a planet a zillion miles from home. We've got no idea where Jenny is, or where Drew is, or where the rest of the class is. And another bunch of robot goons could show up at any moment!"

Sheldon gulped. "Well, sure, when you say it like _that_ …"

"We've got to find Jenny and Drew," said Brad, as he surveyed the smoking wreckage of Stanley's lab. "At least we know the Cluster doesn't have them … but _we're_ not going to have much luck either, walking around in a city filled with robots!"

Sheldon knelt down beside the two decapitated roach-drones, and tapped his pimpled chin. "Hmmm … then maybe if we can't beat 'em … we should join 'em. Come on, Brad, give me a hand with this." He rolled up his sleeves, and start pulling out the mechanical insides of the Cluster robots, tossing gears, hoses, and pistons into a makeshift junk pile. An idea was forming in his brilliant, geeky brain.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Eight / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	8. Everybody Loves a Parade

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eight – Everybody Loves a Parade

* * *

With a pneumatic _swoosh_, the laboratory doors slid open – and nothing happened at all. Then a pair of stumbling, rattling figures appeared in the doorway, and awkwardly clanked their way into the corridor. It was a pair of Cluster roach-drones, a red one and a green one, the same drones that had walked into the lab only a short time ago. But where they had strutted in with brazen arrogance, now they wobbled out like drunken hobos, clumsily waving their arms just to keep themselves upright. Each lurching step they took without falling flat on their rounded faces seemed like a minor miracle. After the green drone bumped into his partner for the third time, the red drone turned to swat him in the side of the head.

"Back off, Sheldon! Stop tailgating!" Brad grumbled with frustration as he madly worked the levers and pedals inside the hollow shell of the red roach-drone. They had hastily gutted the robot bodies, removing their mechanical innards and electronic brains; with a lab full of equipment and a little technological know-how, Sheldon had converted the Cluster drones into a pair of robotic exo-suits. He had done a rush job, and the drone-suits couldn't do much more than walk around – but that would have to be good enough to get them outside. Assuming, of course, that they could figure out how to use the controls.

"Well, quit making sudden stops!" said Sheldon, as he pumped the green drone's hydraulics up to full pressure. They'd only walked their robot suits twenty feet down the corridor, and both of them were already working up a sweat. And it didn't help that it was thirty degrees warmer inside of the hollow shells. Sheldon wiped his forehead against the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and peered out of the eye-holes in the roach's domed head. He scanned left and right, looking for any signs that might lead them out of the complex … but all he saw was a featureless corridor.

"So … uh … do you remember which way we came in?" asked Sheldon, staggering to a stop.

Brad folded the red drone's arms, and tried to remember. "Well, sure … they brought us in from … uh … I'm pretty sure we passed that triangular door. Or another door just like it. Uh … okay, I'm pretty sure we passed a door of _some_ kind. Look, let's just walk down to the end of …"

They nearly jumped out of their shells when a large elevator door hissed open ten feet in front of them. Out rushed a twelve-foot tall Cluster warrior with a long, protruding horn on his head; the boys' stomachs sunk when they recognized him as that megalomaniac, Commander Smytus. _Not even two minutes out the door_, Brad groaned to himself, _and we're busted!_ Smytus nearly bulldozed right through them – the boys had to work their controls like crazy to keep from falling over on their backs.

"Argh! – watch where you're going, mindless peons!" he bellowed over his shoulder, as he thundered towards the laboratory with servos growling. Then he stopped suddenly … and turned back to Brad and Sheldon, with an expression of concern on his metallic face. Brad gulped hard as Smytus approached – but the commander's bravado seemed to have evaporated.

"_Ooooh_ … are you the two drones the queen sent down here?" the commander asked in a nervous voice. He brushed a few flakes of dirt off the red drone's chassis. "Sorry about that little outburst, soldier … heh-heh … it's been a hectic couple of days. Ahh, you haven't gone into the _lab_ yet, have you?"

Inside his disguise, Brad broke into a sly smile. Smytus was _still_ worried about covering his robotic butt, and he was afraid that these two "drones" knew that Jenny had escaped. "Ahhh … noooo, we haven't," he answered. "We tried to, but that little scientist guy told us he didn't want to be disturbed. He said he was still working on Jen – uhhh, XJ-9. _Yeahhhh_, that's the ticket."

Smytus smiled, and heaved a sigh of relief. "_Phew_ – all right, go about your business, drones. I'll go … uh …. 'check up on' XJ-9 myself." He clanked over to the lab door, and raised a claw to the button –

"_Wait!_" screamed Sheldon, from within the green drone. "You can't!"

"I _can't_?" Smytus gave him a puzzled look.

Brad pounded his temples, trying to think up a quick con. Smytus didn't want anyone to know that Jenny had escaped, but the boys didn't want anyone to know that _they_ had escaped. "You don't need to check, sir. We already radioed a report back to the queen! And she said … for … us … to … " – _think think think think_ – what had the drone mentioned earlier – "… head to the _Festival_. And that if we saw Commander Smytus, he was to head to the Festival too, immediately!"

Smytus tapped his chin suspiciously. "The Festival? She wants me to report for parade duty?"

"That's _it_!" said Brad, snapping his fingers. "Yup, parade duty, on the double. Uh, so everyone can come see the greatest Cluster warrior ever – the robot who defeated XJ-9!"

"_What?_ I mean … _right!_" Sheldon followed Brad's lead. "Just think of it! Thousands of robots chanting your name, taking your picture, getting you to sign their Commander Smytus trading cards …"

The commander puffed out his broad chest, always ready to have his massive ego stroked. "Well, I suppose it _is_ only fair to give the citizens a chance to see their champion up close … after all, if countless millions want to bestow praise and adoration upon me, who am I to say no? All right, drones, follow me to the parade grounds! I didn't really want to talk to that annoying little egghead anyway."

Commander Smytus stepped back into the elevator, and the two drones stumbled in after him, trying to keep their wobbling to a minimum. As the doors closed, Brad used his shirttails to mop the sweat from his forehead. This time it wasn't the heat; it was his jangling nerves. On the plus side, he and Sheldon were on their way to the surface. But apparently, they were headed for a parade. Which was certain to be filled with thousands of Cluster robots. And watched by millions more Cluster robots. The queasy feeling in his belly made him wonder if he wasn't jumping out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

* * *

The Skylane Traffic Control room actually wasn't much bigger than the chemistry lab back at Tremorton High. But it looked a lot bigger, because three of the walls were covered with holographic display screens, and seemed to stretch off into infinity. Computer graphics showed all of the airborne vehicle traffic throughout the capital. To Drew, it was a nearly impossible task to discern any patterns out of the swirling colored pixels. But somewhere in that mess of three-dimensional spaghetti was a problem with the traffic software, and it was causing a 5.8 loss of efficiency. To the supervising robot, that was an embarrassment, so he had reported the problem to LinkSysNet.

And that's why Allison was here now. Her left arm had deployed a computer screen and keyboard, and her fingers were plugged into a data port on the main traffic computer. Numbers and symbols whizzed by on the screen, but they didn't faze her; if anything, they bored her. "This won't take much longer," she sighed. "I'm really sorry about this, Drew. You could be at Festival right now having fun, instead of stuck in here watching a _software plumber_."

"Don't worry about it," he smiled, gesturing to the holographic displays. "I'm easily entertained by pretty colors and shiny flying things." That got a chuckle out of her, and gave Drew an excuse to study the giant displays a little closer. It took some effort to understand all the symbols, but the screen on the right seemed to show space traffic flying to and from the Cluster capital's spaceport. Next to it was a flight schedule listing all of the planets in the great Cluster Empire. It was a long list, but of course, Earth wasn't on it. Yet. Drew saved a copy of everything in his memory, hoping to make sense of it later.

"Well, I really appreciate the company," she said. "The maintenance droids aren't much for conversation. All they talk about are subroutines this, efficiency that – same thing all day long. They're practically part of the machinery." Allison _harrumphed_ at that thought, looking at the connectors that plugged her arm into the Cluster traffic computers. _Just like I was part of the machinery_, she sighed to herself. "Just a bunch of happy little cogs, doing their little part to keep the big gears turning."

Drew noticed the bitterness in her voice; it wasn't the first time that Allison had sounded less than thrilled with her duties. "You know, Dot told me that you've got a _really important_ job."

Allison rolled her eyes. "For some reason, Dot's got it in her head that I'm some kind of big shot because I'm an LSN droid. But all I do is plug myself into computer nodes like this one, and hit a bunch of stupid keys on my keyboard. _Wheeeee_." She raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "You know, there's a _reason_ that millions of robots come here to watch the _air show_, and not the computer repair-bot show."

"True, but nobody calls a fighter pilot when their e-mail stops working," he laughed – then he grew serious once more. "Allison, if you don't like it, why don't you just do something else?"

"Just do something _else_?" Her face twisted into a puzzled frown. "You mean – pick my own career, all by myself? Huh – what a crazy idea! But I can't do that. When Mom and Dad put in a requisition to build kids, they only got permission for one. Mom insisted on a girl, and Dad insisted on an LSN droid, to follow in the family tradition. So here I am," she said, sweeping her free arm in a theatric bow. "I knew five minutes after I was turned on that I'd be an LSN droid for the rest of my life. Oh, I suppose I could get a software upgrade, or a system overhaul. But that would really upset my family – especially my dad." She smiled at him, with a touch of sadness in her eyes. "And I just couldn't do that to him. Sometimes … sometimes you've just got to do what's best, even if it's not what you want."

Drew fidgeted with his hands, feeling a bit sullen as she finished up her repair job, and unplugged herself from the computer node. "That doesn't seem very fair to you," he said.

Allison brushed off her hands, and converted her arm back to normal. "Oh, it's not really so bad," she smiled, "sure, it takes up a lot of my time – but it pays well, and there are a lot of robots who are worse off than me. I could be working at the Galleria, pouring silicone smoothies for a living." She laughed at that thought as she picked up the supervisor's logbook, to file her electronic report. Then she made a face, and starting talking in a funny, nasally voice. "Ahhh, I'd like an extra-large high-octane smoothie with a double shot of Teflon please, miss!"

That made both of them bust up with laughter – and made her fumble the supervisor's logbook. The thin computer pad clattered to the floor, and slid underneath a bank of traffic computers – each one the size of an industrial refrigerator. "Smooth move, Allison," she groaned, slapping herself in the face.

"Not a problem!" said Drew, leaping at the chance to be chivalrous. With a quick _schwerrrp_, his arm stretched out and flattened, to fit the narrow space beneath the large computer mainframe. There was only an inch of clearance, but that was more than enough room for a shape shifter. He quickly recovered the logbook and handed it back to Allison – but then his heart sunk, seeing the look of astonishment on her face. He just realized what he'd done. _Oh, great. Now she knows I'm a freak-job ball of silver slime. Any second now she's gonna scream her head off, or faint, or puke a quart of oil on the floor …_

"Allison, look … I'm sorry, I should have said something. I'm … I'm not like other robots …"

"I know!" she grinned. "Drew, that is _so high-frequency cool_! You've got to tell me how do you do that. Did you get an upgrade, or were you built that way? Or are you a _prototype_?!?"

Drew nearly fell over in shock. "Wait, wait, wait … you _know_?!? How did you know?"

"Well … remember yesterday, when Tank almost crashed the car? And I almost fell out, and you caught me?" She fought back a giggle, enjoying the look of bewilderment on his face. "You … _umm_ … you had your arms wrapped around my waist … _three times_. I thought that was kind of … _interesting_. I sort of realized right then that there was something different about you."

"Oh … heh … yeah, right." He felt his face burn with green fire, but still couldn't get over the fact that she _knew_. She saw him shape-shift, and she didn't freak out, she didn't sneer in disgust, she didn't say _anything_ … nobody had ever done that before. All she did was come back to the hotel this morning, eager to see him again. _Could it be … could it be she actually enjoys being with me?_

"Well, I'm all finished here," she said. "Do you want to give Dot and Jenny a call?"

Drew fought to keep his racing emotions under control. _Transportation. Ride home. Gotta keep focused on finding a ride home._ "Uh … actually, if you don't mind … _gulp_ … I was kind of interested in going to see the spaceport." He nodded towards the giant holographic display. "Easily amused by shiny flying things, and all that. Do you … ah … know a good place to watch the starships fly out?"

She smiled nervously, secretly glad that he didn't want to get back together with their friends. "The _best_ place isn't at the spaceport at all. It's the observatory at Mile High Tower. From up there, you can see forever. If we catch the monorail, we can be there in five minutes."

"Why don't we just walk there together, instead," he grinned. "I'm not in a hurry."

* * *

The Royal Zoo contained animals more unimaginable than anything Jenny had ever seen or read about back on Earth. She saw an eight-legged hippopotamus that could outrun a cheetah. In the desert habitat, she saw sand dolphins and walking cactus plants. The insectorium had given her and Dot a serious case of the heebie-jeebies; she _knew_ she was going to have nightmares about those flying white spiders for weeks. And the aquarium featured a rare school of porcupine fish, that hunted by shooting needles out of their mouths. Still, even with all these amazing creatures on display, the robots all wanted to see the same thing – the Primate Preserve. Because that's where the humans were.

She was standing in a long corridor lined with tall plate-glass windows on either side. And she couldn't believe what her optic sensors were seeing. Jenny gazed in horror into the first cage, where six human adults, three male and three female, sat in a badly-recreated forest environment, lounging around on piles of leaves and dirty hay. They wore roughshod canvas clothing, and had dull, stupid looks on their filthy faces. Five of them were eating bowls of green algae mush; the sixth was sucking on a banana. Each one had an ear tag, and wore a seamless metal collar around their necks.

"Aw, sprockets. They're just sitting around today," Dot huffed impatiently. She rapped her hand against the glass. "C'mon, c'mon, do something. Jump. Climb the tree. Swing on the tire!"

"Please do not tap the glass, miss," droned an info-bot, hovering a few feet away. "Now, if I can have everyone's attention – this first display shows a typical pack of humans in their native environment. Please note the primitive feeding habits and the instinctive need to scratch themselves. I'm afraid they're not active right now – as you can see, it's their feeding time. Once they're done, they'll stretch out under a tree and take a nice, long nap." The crowd of robots surrounding them _ooohed_ and _ahhhed_, and snapped dozens of holo-pictures.

Jenny's jaw nearly dropped clean off of her face. _This is wrong – this is so totally wrong!_ "Excuse me, Mr. Info-bot? Why are the humans all wearing collars?'

"That's a very good question, young lady!" chirped the info-bot. "In the wild, humans can be very violent, and will sometimes attack each other for no reason at all. That's why we fit them with health collars, to monitor their frail organic bodies! That way, if one of them gets too aggressive, our trained specialists can calm it down, and keep it from hurting itself or its pack members."

"Aw, that's no fun!" shouted a bratty robot child. "I wanna see them fight! Make 'em fight!"

"Now, why don't we just move along to the next exhibit, little fellow?" chuckled the info-bot.

In the next cage was a group of teenage boys, playing with a bright yellow ball. Jenny grew hopeful for a moment, but didn't recognize any of them as one of her classmates. A robotic trainer stood in the cage, holding a pail of something that looked like chicken legs. He blew a whistle, and pointed to a basketball hoop mounted on the wall. The teenagers stared at the hoop like it was a calculus exam – then one of them lobbed the ball into the air, clanking it off the rim. On the second try, he got it through the basket, and the trainer rewarded him with a drumstick. The boy rolled on the ground in celebration, gnawing on his treat, and the crowd _clanked_ its hands together in applause. The little robot boy roared with laughter. "Look at the silly humans playing with the ball! Ha, ha … they think they're robots!"

"I think I'm going to be sick," Jenny mumbled to herself, as she saw cage after cage of human adults, teens, and children behaving like wild beasts. If this is what robots on Cluster Prime thought humans were like, then it was no wonder they treated them like animals. The robots around her all seemed like decent, normal folk. They didn't strike Jenny as being cruel or sadistic – certainly not like the way that Vexus acted. To these robots, caging a human was no different than caging a monkey, or a snake, or a parrot. Maybe they wouldn't even consider human slaves to be slaves at all – any more than a team of plow-horses could be considered slaves. So how could the ordinary robots of the Cluster be so completely different than Vexus and her army? Yet _more_ unanswered questions to run through her central processor.

Jenny took a few steps back from the crowd, and deployed her bio-scanner as quietly as she could. The little dish rotated, and the screen lit up with white dots for every human in the zoo – but after a few moments, the words _No Matches Found_ flashed on the scanner's screen. Brad and the others weren't here. And as horrible as it was to leave all these humans in captivity, she knew she had to keep looking for her friends. These humans were probably the lucky ones, after all. Vexus probably sent all the others off to a more hideous fate.

"Dot, I've seen everything I want to see here," Jenny croaked. She tried not to show how uncomfortable she felt, but she wasn't doing a good job. "Let's go – I don't think I like the zoo very much."

"Okay, no problem," said Dot, a bit surprised at Jenny's attitude. "You feeling all right? You've been looking a little low-RPM ever since we walked into the Primate Preserve. It's nothing to be ashamed of! Lots of robots are scared of humans. I mean, look at 'em! All pink and fleshy, with those little fingers and those beady little eyes … _yeeeesh_!"

"No, it's not that. It's just that I know some humans back home, and I'd never want to see them in a cage." Dot gave her a funny look, and Jenny rubbed the back of her head nervously. "That is … we have some pet humans back home, and we just let them run around in the back yard. They're happier that way!"

"Oh, you're such a big softie," laughed Dot. "_Happier that way!_ Jenny, relax. They're just humans. It's not like they have any real feelings."

* * *

The ceremonies in front of Queen Vexus' palace were spectacular almost beyond the human brain's ability to fathom. Hundreds of thousands of Cluster soldiers marched in perfectly ordered rows and columns, their servos whining in unison to trace out intricate patterns on the sprawling parade ground. Millions of ordinary robotic citizens, waving flags and banners, covered every square inch of the palace complex for a mile in any direction. They cheered enthusiastically as hover-tanks and six-legged artillery platforms rumbled past in a display of Cluster military might. Mobile rocket launchers glided down the parade route, each carrying a famous warrior who waved to the roaring crowds. Robotic drill teams, robotic marching bands, robotic pageantry everywhere one looked – all in the shadow of the Iron Pyramid, with its towers and spires that stretched into the clouds themselves.

And up amongst the clouds, on a balcony jutting out from the great dome atop the pyramid, Queen Vexus smiled and waved to her adoring subjects. Her image was projected onto giant floating holo-screens, so all below could admire her greatness; her smiling face gazed down upon the denizens of the capital, like an all-seeing goddess from atop her mountain temple. She gave a stirring speech, praising the greatness of the Cluster, and touting the superiority of the robot as the highest form of life in the universe. She told them how fortunate they were to be living in a Golden Age. She said it was the destiny of the Cluster to bring Peace, Freedom and Justice to the robots of the galaxy – and it was her destiny to lead them. And on that cue, a team of sleek wasp fighters dove out of the crimson sun, trailing patriotic red and green smoke, and painted a huge portrait of Vexus' face in the skies above the palace.

Then the queen leapt off of her balcony and glided down to the parade grounds, all while millions of voices chanted her name in near-worship, like a synthesized cosmic choir. "All hail Vexus!" the roach-drones shouted in unison. The chant built in volume, louder and louder, until hundreds of thousands of drones were pledging their loyalty to the queen. An honor guard of ant-bots fell in line behind the queen, and she began a royal inspection of her troops. The formations of drones, officers, and commanders snapped to perfect mechanical attention as the crowd's chant continued, "All hail Vexus!"

"All … _pant_ … hail … _pant_ … Vexus," gasped Sheldon, swinging his robot's arm into a salute. He and Brad had gotten stuck with Commander Smytus' battalion, and now they were standing at attention in the very middle of the palace complex. Sheldon's arms and legs screamed with exhaustion; his tee-shirt was completely soaked through, and the rock-hard metal seat was killing his back. He leaned over to whisper to his rust-red partner. "Brad, how much longer do we gotta keep this up? I'm dying in here!"

"I got no idea," Brad groaned back, on the verge of passing out. He tried to stretch out the cramps in his legs, and pulled off his black sweater-vest to cool himself. They had marched their exo-suits around in military formations for the past two hours, and his arms felt like they were going to fall off. "_Ohhh_, so thirsty … what I wouldn't give for a bottle of icy cold water … or to do a cannonball into a nice swimming pool … or to have a water gun fight with my little brother …"

"Stop talking about _water_," whimpered Sheldon. "_Unghhhh_ … I gotta go so bad I can _taste_ it!"

"Oh, _great,_" sighed Brad. "Look, Sheldon, you're just going to have to hold on until we can get out of here! We gotta ditch these soldier dudes and find Jen and Drew – oh, crap. Oh, _holy, holy_ crap. Sheldon, just hang on and be quiet! Cross your legs and don't think about it!"

Brad and Sheldon snapped their drone-suits to rigid attention, as Vexus regally glided up to Smytus' group of soldiers. Brad sat perfectly still inside his red drone; Sheldon munched on his lip in agony. They were almost afraid to breathe for fear of being found out. Vexus, Queen and Supreme Commander of the Great Cluster Empire, was standing only a few feet away from them.

Vexus gestured for Smytus to approach, and he smartly fell in step behind her as she strolled past the drones. The queen clasped her hands behind her back, and spoke in a calm, pleasant voice. "Commander, I just wanted to congratulate you one more time on capturing XJ-9 for me," she purred. "You should know that your efforts have not gone unnoticed."

"Thank you, my great and glorious Queen," grinned Smytus, never missing a chance to suck up …

_That's it, that's it, just keep on walking_, Brad mumbled under his breath.

"And there's something else that has not gone unnoticed," continued Vexus – then she stopped directly in front of Brad and Sheldon, and snapped around. The evil robot queen glared directly into Smytus' face, throwing daggers with her eyes. "I noticed that XJ-9 is _nowhere to be seen_," she hissed. "I told you and the scientist _yesterday_ that I wanted her ready for these ceremonies."

_Oh, NO! Don't stop here! Get lost!_ Brad began to worry that he was _sweating_ too loudly.

Smytus felt the oil run cold in his tubing. "Y-y-your Majesty, I beg of you, give me a chance to …"

"You do realize that operation Cluster Dawn is only six days away, don't you?" she snarled. "When our forces _pour_ out of hyperspace, and _rain_ destruction down upon the planet Earth …"

A soft, whimpering moan came from Sheldon's green roach-drone. "Ohhhh … _nnnnghh_ …."

"… I need XJ-9 ready to take her place_ on the throne_ of our newest colony, so we can use the Earth base to _flood_ the galaxy with _wave_ after _wave_ of our new starships!"

Smytus winced under his queen's laser-like gaze. "Your Majesty, the scientist is working as fast as he can! He's under _enormous, enormous pressure_!"

"… _Hurrrkkknghh_ …" The green drone hopped from one foot to the other. Brad chewed madly away on his fingernails, silently willing Sheldon to hold it together for just a few more seconds.

"Heed my warning, Smytus," growled the robot queen, "I want XJ-9 fully reprogrammed by the end of the day. Disappoint me … and you can _flush_ your career goodbye!"

"Majesty, please, let me assure you," pleaded Smytus. "I consider XJ-9 to be Priority _Number One_!"

"… _NNNURRRGHHHH_ …" Sheldon's drone began to clatter and shake violently.

Vexus and Smytus turned in unison, staring at the vibrating roach-drone with perplexed looks on their faces. The queen drifted over to float directly above Sheldon, and peered down to study his nervous, jittery eyes. Her long, spidery finger curled down and tapped the drone's head, making a hollow, echoing sound. "Commander Smytus, what the devil is wrong with this drone?"

Brad summoned his courage, grabbed his controls, and swung the red roach-drone's arm around his green comrade's shoulder. "Ahh, nothing at all, your highness, ma'am!" His heart nearly jumped out of his mouth as the evil robot queen turned her eyes in his direction, but gulped hard, and kept on talking. "It's just … that … my … partner suffered a _malfunction_ during the parade. Yeah, sure, a malfunction! But he didn't want to leave, and miss the chance to cheer on your magnificent queenliness!"

Vexus' face twisted into a sneer of disapproval. "See that you get him to a maintenance facility as soon as possible." Without a second thought, the queen returned to her royal inspection, and Brad collapsed back in his seat, breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Smytus looked like a nervous wreck himself. He shot the boys an angry glare, and pointed a clawed finger into Brad's chest. "You, take him to be repaired immediately! I won't have any of my drones embarrassing me in front of the queen! Hurry up, he's leaking coolant all over the place."

_Leaking coolant … awwww, Sheldon!_ "Yes, sir! Right away, sir!" Brad and Sheldon peeled their drones out of formation, and scrambled past tens of thousands of Cluster soldiers, heading away from the parade grounds as fast as their legs could carry them. As the queen continued her procession before swelling throngs of adoring robots, all waving flags and cheering her name, nobody noticed two lowly roach-drones slip into the crowd. The boys weaved their way through a sea of metallic hips and elbows, struggling to get away from the madness of the Festival ceremonies. Ten minutes later, they had finally maneuvered their exo-suits to the front gates of the royal palace complex. With a quick salute to the guards, they strolled outside, and headed out into the city.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Nine / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	9. The Hunt Begins

A/N – Kraven: I forgot about 'Dot Matrix' from Reboot. But I know it was the name of a character in 'Spaceballs'. So it's not terribly original either way. Specter: Yes, Allison remembers the crash, but she doesn't remember what caused it. I should have made that more clear. Everyone: this chapter has taken a little longer than usual to crank out. September has been crazy in Loon World – sorry guys!

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Nine – The Hunt Begins

* * *

"Security check," chirped the wall speaker. "Please confirm identity via serial number …"

Smytus slammed his fist into the wall, ripped out a clawful of sputtering wires, and tossed them over his shoulder with a snarl. He didn't know why he had been summoned back to Stanley's lab; the message had only said for him to come immediately. He didn't take kindly to being ordered around by civilians. The lab doors swished open and he stomped inside, growling in a confrontational voice. "My identity is Smytus, Destroyer of Worlds – NOT Smytus, Errand Boy for Annoying Braniacs! What do you want now, scientist?!? Why do you waste my time?"

The lab was cloaked in darkness; the only light was that which trickled in from the hallway, sketching out rough outlines of bulky equipment and filling them in with a fuzzy patchwork of shadows. There was no response to his bellicose entrance, and Smytus wondered for a moment if the lab might be empty. But then he noticed a dark figure sitting in a high-backed chair, watching data flow over the flickering green screens above the lab's control panel. The warrior's mood grew downright poisonous. _He dares to have me summoned to this subterranean rat-hole, and now that I'm here, he ignores me!_ "What's the matter, you puny little button-pusher?" he growled. "Do you have residue clogging up your auditory sensors?" Smytus marched up to the chair, whirled it around …

And recoiled in horror as Queen Vexus' cold, piercing eyes stared through him. "My sensors are in perfect condition, my dear commander," she smiled. "And Stanley didn't summon you here; _I did_. See, I decided to come down and check on XJ-9 myself. And, well, you can imagine my surprise."

He felt the turbopumps in his chest seize to a halt, and stumbled a few steps backwards, on the verge of going into system shutdown – then his sensors told him that there were _still more_ robots present in the lab. A series of glowing red orbs flamed to life, encircling him like a pack of mechanical demons. Vexus made a gesture with her serpentine hand, and the room's lighting increased to full brightness – revealing the stunning destruction that had been wrought upon the lab. As the shadows melted away, the floating red orbs resolved themselves into twelve arrogant robotic faces – tall, lean, insectoid robots, painted jet-black with flecks of crimson trim. Vexus had brought a contingent of the dreaded Black Mantis robots with her. A visit from the queen's personal enforcers was never a good thing; for many a robot, those glowing red eyes were the last thing their sensors ever recorded. Smytus' neural processors raced with near-panic – _how much do they know? Does the queen know I've been lying to her since yesterday?_

"Your Majesty … wh-what happened here?" he managed to babble. His bewilderment was genuine; he had no idea of what had gone on in the lab earlier. "Was it … was it some kind of accident?"

"More like a struggle, commander," hissed Mantis-Five, his voice dripping with condescension. "We found the remains … _ewghh_ …" – he pointed to a pile of gray sludge – "… of the scientist, and leftovers from two common roach-drones. But there's no trace of XJ-9 anywhere. In fact, there's no evidence that the scientist was even working on her. It's almost as if she was never even here at all."

Smytus forced a lump of hydraulic fluid to his jaws. "W-well, obviously … she must have escaped."

"Obviously," smiled Mantis-Eight. He had the air of a jungle cat indulging in a little play time with his next meal. "The only logical explanation is that XJ-9 overpowered the scientist, destroyed the lab, and somehow made a daring escape out of a high-security underground facility … all without anyone noticing a single thing." His eyes told Smytus, _both of us know that's not what happened._

The commander tugged nervously at his chest-plate, and fluid coursed through his radiator loops, fighting to cool down his electronics. "Perhaps that blasted nano-droid – yes, that's it. The nano-droid must have attacked the scientist and helped XJ-9 escape! I told that stupid scientist not to fool around with nanobots, but would he listen to me? _Noooo_ …"

"Forget the infernal nano-droid," growled Vexus. "XJ-9 is all that matters to me, and I am – _very_ – upset to learn of her escape." She cupped her long, withered hands and stared into Smytus' face with a gaze that could've drilled a hole through a slab of titanium. "She must be found as soon as possible, using all of the resources at our disposal. I want my private guard, the Black Mantis, to lead the search efforts. You will report to Mantis-One, and co-operate with them in any way you can, commander. I assume you'll have no problem with those arrangements?"

"No, Your Majesty," sighed Smytus, accepting the implied demotion.

"Oh, and Smytus, if you find her, I just _might_ decide not to review the past two days of video from the secret security cameras. You know, the ones that show what's _really_ been going on in this lab."

"Y-y-yes, Your Majesty," he gulped, his claws visibly shaking.

* * *

The Cluster capital looked completely different from five thousand feet up; the commotion of street level was barely visible, and the frenzy of hovercar traffic shrank away into a swarm of tiny insects winding through a gargantuan metal maze. The fantastic skyscrapers which had seemed so imposing from the ground were dwarfed by Mile High Tower; out on the observation deck, they seemed like nothing more than a scattering of children's building blocks. A thin layer of light purple clouds rolled over the city a thousand feet below, and crept off to the south, where the civilian spaceport buzzed with activity. Domed hangars stood out clearly against the horizon, which from this altitude, displayed a noticeable curvature. Drew leaned against the railing, the incredible view filling him with a mix of elation and vertigo.

"You know, if you just lean over a bit, so the landscape fills your field of vision …" – he watched a large starship gently lift off, and speed away to parts unknown – "… it feels like you're flying."

Allison snuck a peek over the railing, and cringed with mock fear. "Lean over a few more inches," she laughed, "you _will_ be flying, you gearhead … straight down!"

Drew smiled and flinched, pretending to slip, and a squeal escaped from Ally's voice recorder – then she realized he was only joking, and punched him in the arm. After a few more exchanges of laughter and horseplay, they turned their attention back to sightseeing. Or, that is, _she_ did. _Drew_ found himself unable to turn his eyes from the amazing robot girl beside him. Ally – sometime in the past few amazing hours, 'Allison' had turned into 'Ally' – had eagerly played tour guide on their walk through the city, and Drew had seen sights more amazing than anything that _any_ human being had seen before. But every monument, statue, and sculpture paled in comparison to the sight of Ally's long violet hair flapping joyfully in the gusty breeze, like a river of mystery flowing behind her beautifully streamlined face, and her two dark, deep eyes, like a pair of infinitely deep pools that beckoned him to …

"Drew? You want to try a drink of my high-octane petro-frappe?"

"Wha?" He shook his head back to reality, trying desperately to regain his focus. "Ahhhh … no, but I'll take that can when you're done with it. Sorry about that, Ally, my mind kind of wandered for a second. The view up here kind of makes your mind spin."

"_Mmmm_, that's why I love to come up here," she grinned, looking out at the landscape that stretched on for hundreds of miles. "You can see that there's more to the universe than just the city. Sometimes I even come up here all by myself after dark, and watch the starships fly in and out. It's fun to try and imagine the amazing places they're going to. Sounds pretty pathetic, huh?"

"I guess we're both pretty pathetic, then," he chuckled, then turned back towards the south, and the landing pads of the spaceport. Somewhere in the haze of his mind, a tiny voice of reason shouted out like an army drill sergeant. _Screw your head on straight, stupid! You and Jenny have to get the kids out of here and back to Earth! Now pay attention and keep your mind on the job!_ His eyes grew out of his head a few inches, like a pair of binoculars, and zoomed in on the spaceport, making x-ray scans of every starship he could see. Each carried hundreds of robots, and many of them were capable of high-speed flight through hyperspace; so in theory, they could easily carry all the students back to Earth. _Sure, easy. Just like walking into an airport and stealing a jumbo jet. How in blazes am I supposed to do that?_

Then Allison walked over next to him, and set her oil-drink down on the handrail. "So what's your home planet like, Drew?" she asked, unaware that she was interrupting his train of thought. "You haven't talked much about it. Jenny says it's 'out in the boonies', but they must have some pretty awesome technology there, to build an android like you."

He smiled at the implied compliment. "Well, it's nothing to get too excited about. Not compared to Cluster Prime, anyway. I mean, just look at where we're standing! I've never taken an elevator above the twenty-second floor in my entire life, and _that_ was just for my grandma's condo."

"Come on," she giggled. "I bet it's a great place to be a robot."

He shook his head at her unintentional irony. "Oh, yeah … great place to be a robot." _Crowds mocking me, people treating me like a monster_ … he stole a glance at her out of the corner of his eye … _knowing I will never, ever meet anyone like you, no matter how long I live._ "It's nice and all," he shrugged, "but believe me, Ally, nobody back home has ever seen anything like this place."

"Then you should send them a souvenir," she suggested helpfully.

He gave her a quizzical look, and she went on. "I mean, sure, you're probably taking some stuff back home with you after Festival, but you could always go buy something now, and ship it overnight. You know, like with Empire Express. 'When it's really gotta get there, really really fast …'"

A stroke of inspiration hit him, as Allison continued singing the catchy jingle. He turned his eyes back to the spaceport, and saw a plain white starship lift off from the cargo area. It was emblazoned with the Empire Express logo, and a quick scan revealed it was filled with cargo containers – and a crew of four. Drew grinned to himself. If they couldn't get themselves off of Cluster Prime as passengers, maybe they could do it as cargo. _It would be super easy to overpower four Cluster robots …_

A sudden gust of wind roared through the observation deck, strong enough that the robotic sightseers had to struggle to keep from being blown over. Drew and Ally braced themselves against the wide handrail – but Ally's can of petro-frappe was almost empty, and the wind snatched it into the air. She instinctively shot her arms out to catch it – grabbing the can just as a pair of silver-green arms stretched out to do the same. The wind died down as quickly as it had flared up, leaving two young robots awkwardly holding an oil can between them, with their metallic fingers blissfully intertwined. With a mix of astonishment and wondrous terror, Drew watched Ally's shiny, perfect cheeks paint themselves a bright lavender … then the oil can clattered to the floor of the platform, leaving him holding onto her smooth, slender hands …

And then a bolt of _something_ shot through his network of nano-computers. Time froze for a microsecond, as a million amazing thoughts screamed through his mind. _This can't be happening. I feel something – I actually feel something! But that's impossible! I don't have a sense of touch, or a nervous system! I haven't felt a thing since I became an android! But what the heck was that buzz I just felt –_

Then he blinked a few times, chuckled awkwardly, and squeezed her hands a little tighter. "I don't suppose you would know where an out-of-towner like me could buy himself a cheesy souvenir?"

Allison swallowed hard, as the soft _hum_ of her cooling motors rose in pitch, just a notch. "Well, there's all kinds of shops and booths set up downtown, at Festival Square. That's where the big opening night celebration is being held. And I think there's even an Empire Express close by," she giggled. She felt the pounding of her pumps deep inside of her chassis, and hopefully stared up into his silvery face. She'd never been to the opening night Festival celebration before, or the opening night dance. A glimmer of worry crossed her expressive eyes. _Stupid, Allison, stupid. He just wants to mail something home. He probably has better things to do than lug a freak like me to a stupid dance …_

But then he offered his green-striped arm to her, and the nervous young robot girl looped her arm around his, lacing their fingers together. They casually made their way towards the tower's express elevator, their optical sensors locked on each other in an amorous gaze. Drew cautiously reached up with his free hand and gently brushed a strip of shiny, purple hair-foil from Ally's warm, inviting eyes. "I hope there's a petro-café close by, too," he smiled. "I think I owe you, after dropping your drink." Somewhere deep inside his mind, that little voice of reason was growing smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

* * *

Even among the hustle and bustle of the capital's hectic shopping district, the disturbance turned the heads of dozens of robotic passers-by, as a chorus of angry shouts rang out from the lobby of the fashionable beauty parlor and day spa. The large crystalline doors of _Bolt, Bath, and Beyond_ flew open, and a pair of haggard, disheveled roach-drones staggered out onto the sidewalk, with a horde of angry female robot customers furiously shaking their hands and claws after them. While the store manager apologized and tried to calm the ladies down, the red and green roach-drones stumbled away from the store, and made their way over to a wrought-iron public bench. With servos and joints squeaking loudly, they plopped their metallic carcasses down, and sagged with exhaustion.

The red drone glowered at his green partner. "Smooth move, Sheldon. Really smooth."

"Geez, Brad, how was I supposed to know it was the ladies' room?" protested the worn-out geek. "One door had a yellow gear on it, the other had a green one. What's that supposed to mean, huh? And I thought that big round thing was an _oil tank_. I didn't know it was a _customer_!"

Brad didn't have any more zingy comebacks for him. He wiped off his forehead and stared up at the unbelievably tall skyscrapers, and the dizzying air traffic that filled the late-afternoon sky, feeling more lost than he'd ever felt before in his life. The robot planet's capital was awe-inspiring, but it completely overwhelmed his senses – and it just stretched on and on and on forever. Every time he clanked his exo-suit around another corner, there was another building that was ten stories higher than the last one. He and Sheldon had been searching the city for hours now, and he didn't know if they'd even gone through one percent of it. Now they were focusing on the types of places that a teenage robot girl would probably go: malls, boutique stores, and most recently, beauty salons. But their search had proven fruitless so far, and Brad was beginning to lose hope that they'd ever see Jenny again. To his amazement, the prospect of losing Jenny troubled him more than the danger of becoming a Cluster slave.

But that was exactly why they had to press on, now more than ever. Not only to save their own skins, and the rest of the class – but to save the entire _Earth_ from Cluster slavery. Brad had to make sure that Jenny found out about this "Cluster Dawn" thing he'd overheard Vexus talking about. The Cluster had made the occasional attempt to attack Earth in the past, but they were mostly obsessed with assimilating Jenny and rest of Earth's robots. Now it sounded like the gloves were coming off; the Cluster was going to launch a full-scale attack on Earth in only six days. Brad thought about the amazing power he'd just seen on display in the military parade. That was just one parade, in just one city, on just one planet of the mighty Cluster Empire. What chance did Earth have against that kind of force?

"Hey Mister Soldier, is something wrong with you?" said a young, tinny voice.

Brad glanced over to see that a young robot toddler had climbed up onto the bench next to him. He was proudly holding on to a cone of Clustard, and looking at him with an intense, interrogating stare. "It sounds like one of your air hoses is loose," he said. "Your insides are going all _huff-huff-huff_."

Brad let out a soft chuckle; for an instant, the annoying little robot reminded him of his own little brother back home on Earth. _Maybe this little guy likes to play 'Army', just like Tuck._ Then he realized what the little tyke was talking about – he was hearing Brad and Sheldon's labored breathing, as their lungs gasped for oxygen. _Oh boy, gotta think of something fast._ "Uhh, well, you see, little guy …"

Then Sheldon spoke up from inside of his green drone. "Not to worry, little citizen! We're just venting off excess pressure from our pneumatic systems. That helps a soldier keep his robotic muscles in tip-top shape, so he can fight off the bad guys!" Sheldon struck a comical pose with his drone's fists, delighting the little robot boy. Brad punched Sheldon's drone in the shoulder, giving him a big toothy grin. _Way to think on your feet, Sheldon! Nicely done!_

Fascinated by the two soldiers, as any little boy would be, the robot toddler reached over to offer up his cone of drippy desert to the green roach-drone. "Wanna bite, Mister Soldier?"

Sheldon was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and the little cone of soft ice cream looked like a gift from the gods to his weary eyes. He opened a slot in the drone's mouth, and quickly snuck off a blob of Clustard with his finger. He licked his lips, stuck the Clustard in his mouth …

And spat it back out so hard that the top of his exo-suit flew completely off of his head. Clustard wasn't like milk-based ice cream; it was made out of oil, like all the other "food" on Cluster Prime. And Sheldon had just swallowed a mouthful of whipped, creamy, high-viscosity goodness. He released the controls of his exo-suit and rubbed his tongue on his hands, trying to flush out the horrible taste …

Then a shrill scream pierced the air, cutting through the chatter and clatter of busy robot pedestrians. The little robot boy jumped away from Sheldon, and pointed to his exposed fleshy face. "Human! Everyone, everyone look, a human! Look, he ate out the inside of that soldier and took him for a host! Wow, just like in the monster movies! _Cool!_"

The rest of the robots on the sidewalk _did not_ think it was so cool. Their metallic jaws dropped in unison – and then they erupted into shrieks of terror, running and rolling in random directions, waving their arms in a frenzy. Robots ran into the middle of the street, bringing ground traffic to a screeching halt – they were _that_ desperate to get away from the organic monsters. Robots rolled into the stores and slammed the doors shut, then deployed power tools from their bodies to bolt the doors shut. Robots clung to each other, shivering violently, frightened beyond the ability to move. Their cries filled the air: "Humans! Naked monkeys! Robot-eating monkeys on the loose! Oh, my Cog, run for your lives!"

Brad and Sheldon realized that they were in serious trouble now. They spilled out of their confining exo-suits, glad to be free of the metallic bodies, but feeling more exposed than ever. And to make things worse, the sight of two hollowed-out robots "bursting" with filthy, sweaty human parasites filled the crowd with an even greater level of hysteria. The boys collapsed against the bench, barely able to stand on their cramped and aching legs, and rushed to stretch out their knotted muscles.

"This doesn't make any sense," said Brad, shouting to be heard over the mob. "How could these robots think that humans are dangerous to them?"

Sheldon ducked behind his hands, shielding himself from a broom that a nervous robot storekeeper was swinging at his head. "Jeez, knock it off, mister!" he pleaded. "We're not trying to hurt you! We're just looking for our friends …"

"AIIIGHHH!" howled the storekeeper. "They talk! The hairless apes talk! They're monsters! Monsters!" He dropped his broom, his tires sent up a squeal of smoke, and he sped off down the sidewalk.

"They're not wearing collars!" screamed another robot. "The hairless apes could attack us at any minute!"

Brad staggered a few steps towards a trembling delivery-bot, and shouted out to him. "Look, please, we're not going to attack you!" The robot's bulb-eyes flickered with fear, and he turned to run away … but Brad grabbed onto his arm, desperate to prove he wasn't a threat. "Please, just listen to me for a second! My friend and I are lost, and scared, and we just want to …"

The robot yanked his arm free from Brad's grasp, with a look of disgust on his face. "Get your stinking paws off me, you darn dirty ape!" Then he sprinted off into the panicked crowd.

Chaos erupted in every direction that Brad and Sheldon ran. The boys scrambled down the sidewalk, glancing at the alleyways between the buildings – but they didn't want to trap themselves in a dead end, with no way to escape. There was no way for them to duck out of sight, for even as thousands of robots ran away from them in a screaming mob, hundreds more formed a loose perimeter around them, standing a few hundred feet away – fascinated at the opportunity to see two wild human beings prowling the streets of the big city. And there was a third group of robots, too; a scattering of brave citizens who decided to fight back against the freakish talking human monsters. Brad ducked as a piston rod sailed through the air, inches over his head. Sheldon sidestepped a large gear-piece, and the boys finally realized that they were being assaulted by a gang of robots who had broken the window of a spare parts shop, and were pelting them with mechanical projectiles. The boys shielded their heads, and sprinted across the street, hoping to put as much distance as possible between themselves and their robot assailants. But despite their efforts, their mere presence created a spectacle wherever they ran. And Brad could hear the shrill wail of approaching sirens, echoing through the metallic canyons of the busy city.

* * *

The young humans gurgled and babbled happily, and scampered around on their hands and knees, to the amusement and adoration of all the robots surrounding the enclosure. Even Dot was smitten with them, and her eyes lit up with glee when one of the toddlers got to his feet, and wrapped his little chubby fingers around her hand. Jenny was glad to see the baby humans so happy, but she still had to fight back feelings of horror and revulsion – after all, the babies were penned up in a glass cage, in a pet store!

"Look, Jenny, he's munching on my finger!" giggled Dot. "I can see why some robots adopt these funny little things. They're so ugly that they're kinda cute!"

"Sure, while they're little," said a young robot girl who worked in the pet store. Her finger swiveled open and deployed a rubber nipple, and one of the babies grabbed onto her hand to start feeding. "That's what everyone thinks at first, when they bring home a pet human. Then they get bigger, and wilder, and once the little monsters turn ten or so, they become uncontrollable, and everyone brings them back to get collared. A shame, but it's for the best, really."

"Yeah – sure – for the best." Jenny picked up one of the human babies, and chuckled at his pudgy red cheeks, with a sad smile on her metal face. What kind of life could one of these little guys expect to have here on Cluster Prime, doomed to be treated as an animal? It almost moved her to tears, but she couldn't bring herself to get mad at the robots around her. All of the robots she'd seen today, at the Royal Zoo, at the veterinarian's, even at the circus – they all treated humans like animals because they _really did think_ that humans were just animals. Sure, some of the robots hated humans, but not in a cruel, sadistic way. Not in the way that Vexus and her army did. But how could so many robots be so wrong about humans? Or maybe a better question, Jenny thought to herself, was – _how could so many robots be tricked into being so wrong about humans?_

"Well, this was kind of … _fun_," chuckled Jenny, setting the baby back down in its cage. _If by 'fun', you mean 'nightmarish'_. She folded her arms with a deep sigh, and scratched off another entry from her memory banks. She'd been searching the city all day with Dot, checking out every possible place that human beings could be found, but had come up with one dead end after another. _No sign of the kids yet. No sign of Brad …_

As Jenny and Dot walked out of the store, they heard a voice squawk to life from a small wall monitor next to the cashier. The screen turned red, and displayed the message _Animal Control Alert_. The manager of the store wheeled over to check the monitor, rubbing his stainless steel chin pensively with his clamp-shaped hand, as the screen changed to show a map of the city.

"Excuse me?" Jenny asked the pet store manager. "What does that message mean?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing to be worried about," smiled the jovial robot. "Just a warning message from Animal Control – a couple of humans got loose over on the other side of town. Miles away from here, we're perfectly safe. A pair of adolescents – hmmm, they can cause a bit of trouble, now. A black-haired one with blemished skin, and a thin one with red, spiky hair. Animal Control will be on the scene in no time at all. Sometimes, the pet store gives them a hand with collars and tranquilizer guns …"

Jenny's eyes shot out to the size of basketballs. "Did you say _red spiky hair_? Omigosh … omigosh, that could be Brad!" She quickly memorized the map on the wall monitor, and grabbed her new friend by the wrist. "Dot, come on, we've got to go!"

Before Dot could ask for an explanation, Jenny dragged her out of the pet store, and onto the large balcony that jutted out from the eightieth floor of the copper skyscraper. As a small group of robots looked on with fascination, Jenny's back opened up with a series of _whirrs_ and _clanks_, and she deployed her dual wings and booster engines. The turbines in the huge boosters spooled up to power, and Jenny waved for Dot to come closer. "Just hold onto my back, Dot, and I'll have us there in a jiffy!"

"Have us where? Where are we goiEEEEE …." Before Dot finished her sentence, a blast of exhaust shot out from Jenny's boosters, and she sailed into the busy skies of Cluster Prime. Dot buried her face into Jenny's back, too afraid to watch as the teen heroine spiraled in and out of airborne traffic, dodging her way between speeding hovercars and lumbering hover-trucks. Jenny called up her stored map of the capital, and charted out the fastest course from the pet store to the reported location of the escaped "wild animals". Something told her that this was the real deal, this time she was really going to find Brad and the others. She had to get there to rescue them, before Animal Control got to them first. Who knows what they might do to them? Her CPU was racked with worry, and she bumped up the power to her booster rockets to increase her speed.

She was so focused on racing to Brad's rescue that she didn't notice the pair of sleek black hovercars silently pull into traffic behind her. They followed at a discreet distance, and their occupants performed a series of scans on the robot girl, and ran the results through the central Cluster databases. The jet-black robots came to a unanimous conclusion, and the lead robot sent out an encrypted message:

Target has been identified as XJ-9. Notify Queen Vexus that her guest has been located. All Black Mantis units, converge on my signal.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Ten / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	10. Reunion on the Elevator

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Ten – Reunion on the Elevator

* * *

The two young robots spilled out of the holo-photo booth bursting with immature laughter, and nearly knocked over one of the short, stubby janitor-bots that patrolled Festival Square. He shook his power brush at them and sped off in a huff, leaving the metallic couple collapsed back-to-back against a lamp post, struggling to regain use of their vocal processors. Even amongst the raucous atmosphere of the evening's grand festivities, Drew and Ally were causing a commotion, but most of the festival-going robots simply shook their heads at them, with knowing smile on their faces.

"Why you … I am _so_ gonna get you for that," laughed Drew, shaking a playful fist at her.

"Wait, wait, wait," gasped Ally. "We almost forgot the disks! _D'oi!_ I'll be back in a second!"

Drew watched Ally bounce back towards the booth, grinning a huge grin to nobody in particular, for no reason at all. He looked around him, drinking in the lights, the decorations, and the carnival atmosphere, still unable to believe that he was in a place like this with a somebody like Ally. Then he chuckled at himself – he was acting so stupid, really. What was the big deal? He was just a guy, Ally was just a girl, they were enjoying an evening together, it happens all the time –

_No. No, it doesn't happen all the time, not back home. Not to me._ Ally twisted her hands with impatience, waiting for the machine to spit out their holo-disks, and grinned at him with a comical expression. She made him laugh. Pure, stupid, fun laughter, not the kind of snide self-deprecating snickers that Drew used to sneak his way through everyday life back in Tremorton. Ally made him laugh. She made him happy. He realized that he had never really known what 'happy' felt like, until today.

"Here you go," she giggled, handing him a thin, metallic disk with a mirrored surface. "One cheesy souvenir, as requested. One for you, and one for me."

"Maybe I'll send the folks back home a nice snow globe," he laughed, storing the holo-disk inside of his body. "I don't think I want _anyone_ else to see this thing."

"Coward," she smirked back – and then she was interrupted by an eruption of sound. A sixty-piece robot band started warming up, adjusting their instruments. Synthesized howls and tones mixed with things Drew recognized, like trumpets and guitars and keyboards. The music had a vaguely haunting, techno feel to it – and the final addition of a strong, synthesized drumbeat was the piece de resistance. The teeming crowd in Festival Square slowly congregated towards the band's grand stage, and a few adventurous automatons started to gyrate their ball-and-socket joints to the infectious rhythm.

Ally's eyes lit up upon hearing the music, and Drew could read the unspoken request on her face as she watched the dancers burn up the square. He gathered his nerve, and nodded towards the crowd. "It … it seems stupid to come all the way down here, and … y'know, not have at least one dance."

She gulped anxiously, trying very unsuccessfully to hide her giddy excitement. "I … I'm not a very good dancer," she stammered. "I'll probably stomp on your feet."

"Don't worry about it," he grinned. "They'll grow back."

Her face broke into the widest smile he'd seen all day. Then her hand clamped around his wrist, and she sprinted off towards the dance area, stretching his arm out an extra two feet as she dragged him along. He chased after her, laughing with wonderful insanity, and vaguely remembered something about cargo ships and escape plans that just didn't seem very important at the moment.

* * *

A hand grabbed Sheldon by the scruff of his sweatshirt, and yanked him backwards just as a pair of tranquilizer darts _thunked_ into the door of the hovercar he'd been hiding behind. His gaunt frame spun around to see Brad's frenzied, panicked eyes. "Sheldon, get up! Come on, keep running!"

They ducked, as another pair of darts shattered the car's window. "Which way?" hollered Sheldon.

"Away from anything that looks mechanical!" answered Brad, breaking into a flat-out sprint.

"But _everything_ looks mechanical!" said Sheldon, just as a huge tub-shaped robot lumbered around the hovercar on its four stout legs. _Animal Control_ was painted on its white body in bright red letters, and a single-eyed face zoomed in on his teenage form, with lenses whirring and clicking away. A pair of steel tentacles shot out of its body, right at him …

But Sheldon rolled out of the way and sprang to his feet, running like a maniac into heavy traffic, not more than three steps behind Brad. Thirty-wheeled trucks swerved madly as the runaway humans recklessly scrambled across the busy road, creating an even greater spectacle in the shopping district. Brad zigzagged back and forth between lanes with the dexterity of a star running back. He barely danced out of the way as an oil tanker rammed into a traffic signal, sending a huge aluminum pole crashing to the ground like a falling metal tree. Sheldon just closed his eyes and ran blindly across the last three lanes, narrowly avoiding the fender of a delivery hover-van. Moments later, thanks to a little luck and a lot of foolishness, the boys found themselves safely on the sidewalk.

Or not so safely, because still more Animal Control robots were waiting for them. Another large tub-bot slowly approached them, herding them towards a pair of robots holding onto a large net. As nervous robotic citizens watched, the tub-bot deployed another pair of arms, each holding onto an obedience collar. Brad instinctively clutched at his neck again – he did _not_ want to wind up as a zombie slave. His eyes shot left and right, frantically looking for ideas. There had to be some way to escape –

Three large bronze elevator capsules sat at street level on the side of the building behind them, each seated in a groove which ran all the way up the side of the skyscraper. With a soft _ding_, the center capsule's doors split open, and a dozen robot shoppers walked out onto the sidewalk –

Brad grinned, and pounced towards the unsuspecting robots. "_Booga booga booga!!!_"

The robots shrieked in horror, dropped their bags and boxes, and ran off in random directions, despite Animal Control's attempt to calm them down. That allowed Brad and Sheldon to slip inside the elevator capsule and shut the doors. Brad jumped up and mashed the button labeled "150", and moments later, the boys were flattened against the floor as the capsule rocketed towards the heavens with breathtaking acceleration. He grinned as the street-level chaos dropped further and further away –

"All right, Sheldon!" he chuckled. "I think we're home free!"

They were catapulted violently off of the floor, as the elevator shuddered to a teeth-rattling stop. The capsule came to rest between the 105th and 106th floors, and the message "Emergency Override" beeped softly on the control panel. Now it was Sheldon's turn to glare at Brad with a sarcastic look. "'I think we're home free?' Isn't _that_ one of those things you're never supposed to say? Huh?"

"Guilty as charged," gulped Brad, as he watched a boxy white Animal Control van float its way up towards the capsule's huge glass windows. One of the robots in the van leaned out the passenger-side window, pointing a tranquilizer rifle directly at the boys. Brad suddenly realized just how hopeless their situation was – trapped in a small container, over one thousand feet in the air, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The Animal Control robot squinted into his rifle sights, centered the crosshairs on Brad's chest, and squeezed the trigger. Brad winced, waiting for the impact of the needle-tipped dart …

But instead, he heard only the loud _clang_ of the dart ricocheting off of something metal.

And the sound of Sheldon's nasally voice squealing with glee. "_JENNY!_"

He opened his eyes, and grinned at one of the most wonderful sights he'd ever seen in his life. Jenny was hovering on the flames of her twin booster jets, a few feet in front the elevator capsule, with a large metallic shield deployed from her left hand – and a confused, terrified robot girl hanging onto her back. The dumbfounded Animal Control robots just stared at each other, unsure of what to do, as the teen heroine deployed a bullhorn from her right arm, and shouted orders at them. "All right, you guys, just put the guns down and back away slowly! I'll handle things from here!"

"JENNY!" shouted Brad, exploding with joy and relief. "Jenny, I can't believe it! I thought I was never going to _see_ you again!"

Jenny hovered over to the glass, nearly overcome with emotion herself. "BRAD! SHELDON! Oh, thank Jobs! I've never been so happy to see anyone before in my _life_! I was _so worried!_"

"I _knew_ it!" grinned Sheldon, his fists balled in jubilation. "I _knew_ we'd find you!"

Dot shook her head, and blinked her eyes a few times. "Are those two humans _talking_ to us?"

But Jenny wasn't paying attention to Dot at the moment. Her finger pivoted open to deploy a glass cutter, and she quickly sliced a hole in the ceiling-to-floor windows. Then her arms ratcheted out excitedly, and stretched into a huge loop around Brad and Sheldon, crushing them with a relieved embrace. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, as she was finally reunited with her first, best and dearest friend Brad – and yes, even with dorky Sheldon – and the boys returned the bear-hug, and everyone reassured each other that yes, they were okay, they had missed each other, nobody was seriously hurt, nobody had their brain fried, and they all forgot just how lost and hopeless the search had seemed, only a few minutes earlier.

"I'm _so sorry_ this happened," sniffed Jenny, "it's all my fault … hey, what's with the earring?"

Brad rolled his eyes, tugging at the irritating metal tag that hung from his earlobe. "It's a long story, and I'd love to tell you about it over a cheeseburger and a milkshake. I'm _starved_."

"Jenny, it was incredible!" babbled Sheldon. "They took us to this creepy lab underneath the queen's palace. Brad was scared, but I was getting a _little tired_ of those Cluster jerks and their _attitude_ …"

Dot was still staring at Brad and Sheldon, totally flabbergasted. "_Are those two humans talking to us!?!?_"

"_Surprise_, Dot," smiled Jenny, "humans can talk and think, just like robots do."

"B-b-b-but that's impossible!" stammered Dot. She looked as if she'd just come face to face with Santa-bot, or the Loch Ness Robeast. "Humans are just wild, uncivilized beasts with tiny brains! They don't have real thoughts and feelings, like robots do!"

"Who are you calling a _beast_?" snarled Brad. "Because the way I see it, it's the _robots_ around here that are a bunch of uncivilized beasts, putting humans in cages and turning us into slaves …"

"Guys! Dot!" shouted Jenny, trying to calm everyone down. "There's a whole _bunch_ of stuff about Cluster Prime that doesn't make any sense at all! The robots _aren't all_ evil Cluster drones – and the humans _aren't_ a bunch of ignorant monkeys! But this isn't the time or the place to talk about it! So what do you say we go somewhere safe, and try to figure out …"

The screech of a high-powered energy weapon ripped through the elevator capsule, filling the air with the pungent stench of ozone, and shattering the remaining windows into a thousand shards of flying glass. Then another blast slammed into Jenny's back, and she violently crashed into the side of the bronze elevator car. Dot's metallic form was flung into the elevator, nearly crushing Brad and Sheldon, who had dropped to the floor when the first hail of energy fire burst through the windows. Electrical discharges crackled through Jenny's wiring, tripping off dozens of circuit breakers – but her systems recovered, and once she was sure that her friends were safe, she turned with a furious scowl on her face …

To see two sleek black hovercars floating thirty feet away, each carrying a pair of jet-black insectoid robots, all glaring at her with arrogant sneers on their faces. One of the robots had deployed a long beam weapon from his forearm, and it sizzled with the after-effect of a powerful electrical discharge. Jenny recognized the cars as the same kind that had nearly knocked her and her friends out of the sky yesterday afternoon. Tank had called them the Black Mantis – Queen Vexus' private guard. _More like personal goons_, Jenny growled to herself.

The driver leaned out his window, and gave Jenny a cold, dangerous smile. "Ah, XJ-9, what a relief to finally track you down. You know, you've been a very naughty robot, running wild all over the city after Queen Vexus went to _such_ lengths to prepare a lovely room for you at the palace. Disgraceful lack of manners, really. Well, you've had your fun, but now it's time to come with us." Three more weapons deployed and locked on to her, and the driver's eyes glowed a dull, smoky red. "We insist."

"The first shot was just a courtesy tap on the shoulder to get your attention," smirked another robot. "The Black Mantis are not in the _habit_ of being courteous. Resistance is futile, XJ-9."

Jenny flexed her smooth metal knuckles, her face bristling with instant hatred for the Black Mantis. So Vexus had finally realized that she and Drew had escaped – and now her personal royal thugs had tracked her down. A chill ran through her circuits; things had just gotten a whole lot worse. "Stay right there, guys," she shouted, "as soon as I take care of these Mantis jerks, we need to get moving!"

The Black Mantis' electric weapons _whined_ up to full power … but Jenny's arms shot out and latched onto the front bumpers of their hovercars. With a burst of super-strength, she slammed the cars together like a pair of paddles, flattening them into a single crumpled mass of dark metal …

Which exploded outwards in a blizzard of shrapnel. Jenny ducked her face behind her hands, genuinely surprised to see four unscathed Mantis robots burst out of the wreckage, riding hot tongues of rocket exhaust. These robots were a lot tougher than the standard Cluster roach-drone, she realized. This was going to call for the big guns. She cracked open her elbows, and deployed a pair of laser-limbs …

Just as an electrified steel cable flew through the air like a pair of bolos, quickly pinning her arms to her sides. Another electric shock screamed through her body, overloading her servos and shorting out her laser circuits. Jets of smoke shot from her pigtails, and her booster rockets sputtered to a halt. With her rockets off-line, she plummeted towards the cold, hard sidewalk – over a thousand feet below.

Brad lunged forward with concern for his best friend, watching the four Mantis robots pitch over and dive in pursuit of their vanquished prey. The occupants of the elevator had been fortunate to avoid injury from the flying shrapnel; unfortunately, the elevator itself had not been so lucky. A jagged piece of twisted metal had shredded the electro-magnetic motor that propelled the car up and down. For now, the elevator was stuck in place, between the 105th and 106th floors.

The Black Mantis weren't about to let a prize like XJ-9 smash to pieces in the street. They punched their afterburners, racing to catch up with her as she free-fell past the 60th floor. Mantis-18 was the first to get close, and with a series loud _growls_ and _clanks_, his arms converted into a pair of clamps. He closed them around Jenny's waist – then she pivoted about with a nasty smile, and her left leg flipped open to deploy a savage-looking drill. Before Mantis-18 even knew what was happening, his body shuddered with spasms as the diamond tip shredded a hole through his metallic thorax, puncturing his power core.

Now with her power restored, Jenny easily snapped her arms free of the steel cables – but her flying circuits were still off-line. She deployed a grappling hook from her wrist, and flung it towards the face of the skyscraper as she hurtled past the windows at two hundred miles an hour. The hook snagged on a ledge, and the carbon-fibre rope began to unwind at terrific speed; but she grabbed onto the line with her powerful metal fists, sending up wisps of smoke as she brought herself to a halt, like a mountain climber recovering from a sudden fall.

As the lifeless husk of Mantis-18 shot past to make a spectacular crash on the sidewalk below, Mantis-12, 13, and 19 pulled out of their dives, streaking past Jenny as she deployed a large crank from her abdomen. She furiously wound in the grappling hook's line, like a fisherman reeling in a prize catch, and raised herself back up to the tower's forty-first floor. A large pair of blue suction cups sprang from the bottom of her feet, and she started running up the side of the skyscraper, back towards her friends.

But there were new problems up in the elevator. The damaged magnetic motor fizzled and sputtered, and lost power for a split-second – long enough for it to drop by six nerve-rattling inches. Sheldon dropped to hug the floor, his face white as a sheet, as it fully sunk in that they were trapped in a malfunctioning elevator car, over one hundred stories high. Dot broke out of her fascination with the talking humans, screaming as the car jerked downwards, and the floor buckled underneath her feet …

With the ear-splitting screech of failing metal, two of the four clamps on the elevator failed completely. The capsule lurched down and pivoted outwards, swinging like a loose gate in a hurricane. Sheldon and Dot grabbed onto a metal strut, holding on for dear life as the capsule shuddered and twisted – but Brad fell backwards against a plate glass window, a window that wasn't there anymore. His arms and legs swung wildly, but found nothing to hold onto – and suddenly he felt a blast of wind against his body, and suddenly he was staring at the elevator capsule from below. The weightless sensation, while very cool, confirmed his fears. He was plunging to his death.

Jenny dodged another electric stun-blast from Mantis-19, madly scampering across the face of the skyscraper like a robotic crab … then her auditory sensors picked up a very familiar yell. She looked up to spot a redheaded blur, waving his arms frantically as he streaked towards the ground. Her turbopumps nearly leaped into her throat – she didn't have a moment to lose. As Brad whizzed past, Jenny's arms ratcheted outward, and deployed a giant butterfly net. The teenage boy flew directly into the net, with the force of a cannonball. She had caught Brad, but his momentum yanked her suction-cups free from the skyscraper – and now they were both plunging towards the sidewalk. And the three Black Mantis robots were still there, swinging around to make another attack.

She retracted her arms, and Brad clamored onto her back, asking why she didn't simply use her rocket engines. As an energy bolt singed past their heads, and they shot past the 50th floor like a falling piano, his throat flashed bone-dry upon learning that her rockets were still off-line. She tipped over into a headfirst dive, and stretched her arms downwards. Then her wrists unfolded to deploy a pair of long propeller blades. With a high-pitched roar, the propellers spun up to full speed, and provided a steady blast of thrust that slowed their descent, until they came to a hover two hundred feet above the ground.

Another shaft of sizzling orange electron fire screeched past her right pigtail. She tilted the whirling blades to provide forward thrust, and looped back towards the skies like an ancient prop-driven fighter plane – unfortunately, still without guns. Brad shouted out a frantic warning, and she glanced backwards to see that Mantis-12 had pulled into pursuit, and was closing fast. The Black Mantis robot unfolded both of his arm housings, and a pair of laser cannons deployed, their barrels glowing a bright ruby red. With a high-energy squeal, two blasts of laser fire raced towards Jenny's propellers …

And struck the reflector that she'd deployed from a slot in her chest. The beams bounced off the mirrored surface … and pierced the chassis of Mantis-19, slicing him into three easy pieces. The arrogant smirk faded from his insectoid face, and three inert chunks of black metal tumbled towards the sidewalk, trailing thin spirals of oil. Jenny pulled into a climb, flying back towards the teetering elevator capsule, and flashed Brad a quick, confident smile. Mantis-12 was waiting for them, hovering around the 98th floor. She may not have had lasers at the moment, but there were plenty of other tricks up her metal sleeve. She hadn't used the lawnmower attachment in a while …

But that's when she felt something powerful slam into her back. Brad unleashed a grunt of pain, and a shout of surprise, and Jenny suddenly realized that she'd lost track of the fourth robot, Mantis-13. She spun around to see the arrogant Cluster goon hovering a few feet away, clutching Brad tightly to his chest, with a laser weapon nuzzled to the side of his head. A quick gasp escaped from her throat, then her head sank in dejection, and she retracted the lawnmower blades back into her leg housings.

Mantis-12 drifted down on a pillar of flame, and soon all four them were face-to-face, hovering one thousand feet above street level. The Black Mantis robot smirked at Jenny in her vulnerable state, knowing she wouldn't risk anything so long as her precious pet human was in jeopardy. His left hand converted into a strong metallic clamp, and shot out to close around Jenny's neck, holding her head stationary. "You're really making this much harder then it needs to be, XJ-9," he sneered. "Believe me, this will all seem much better … after you've had a good _nap_." With a few metallic _clicks_ and _snaps_, the housing on Mantis-12's right arm opened up, and deployed a flexible arm, with a strip of curved metal at its tip.

Jenny's eyes sprang open in astonishment – that curved metal strip looked familiar. Then she remembered the headband on the bed-platform, back at the hotel. The one that had tried to interface with her brain. It looked just like the headband she was supposed to "back herself up" with!

"What's that thing going to do?" she shouted angrily at Mantis-12.

"Let's just say that when you wake up, you'll see the world in a whole new way," he grinned. "You won't remember any of this unpleasant little scuffle. And your stubborn teenage demeanor … will be made _much_ more agreeable."

A spark of realization flashed in Jenny's mind. "It's not a 'backup' device at all, is it?"

The Black Mantis robot only smirked back, and placed the metal strip firmly against Jenny's smooth forehead. She winced as the headband powered up, and felt herself slipping into sleep mode …

With the shriek of fracturing metal, the last couplings on the elevator car shattered to pieces, and the large bronze capsule fell away from the skyscraper's 105th floor. Jenny, Brad, and the Mantis robots all snapped their heads upwards, to see ten tons of shining, crafted metal hurtling towards them like a bronze meteor. The elevator plowed into them like a runaway bulldozer, and kept rushing towards its date with gravity, ninety-eight floors below.

Mantis-12 and 13 slid through the capsule's open windows, and slammed viciously into the ceiling of the elevator car, stunned by the unexpected impact. Brad spun loose from his captor's grip and wrapped his arms around a broken metal strut, screaming at the top of his lungs. He still didn't manage to out-scream Sheldon and Dot, who were rattling around inside the tumbling capsule like a pair of dice. The skyscraper streaked past them in a blurred palette of dull metallic colors, twisting and spinning along with the rest of the world in a series of nauseating somersaults. Jenny clutched onto the bottom of the elevator car, trying to come up with an idea even as the sidewalk rushed towards them like a giant fist.

As the bronze capsule shot past the 68th floor, Jenny struggled inside the spinning elevator, and shouted for her friends to get ready. Then she glared up at the faces of the Black Mantis robots, and broke off a piece of broken support strut. She slammed the strap of metal against the Mantis' chests, and gave them each a punch to the jaw, to keep them disoriented. Then she secured the strap in place with white-hot rivets, using her converted right hand. The evil robots writhed and struggled, but they were stuck to the capsules' ceiling as if they were welded in place. Now there were only seconds to spare …

Jenny's arms looped around Brad, Sheldon, and Dot, and she pulled them out of the bronze elevator cage at super-speed. Now they were standing on top of the capsule, watching the skyscrapers grow taller and the ground grow closer, as they rocketed past the 38th floor. Sheldon screamed and wrapped his arms around Jenny's neck, slamming his eyes shut. Dot wrapped her own arms around Jenny's waist, nearly crushing Sheldon between them. Brad looked anxiously at Jenny as the wind blasted his copper hair out of his face, but she simply tightened her grip and pushed away from the roof of the elevator …

And launched a tethered bundle of fabric out of the middle of her back, which instantly inflated into a billowing blue-and-white parachute. They clung firmly to each other as the parachute cord snapped with a reassuring jolt, and sighed with relief as they quickly decelerated to a safe descent speed. Then a horrific explosion of noise rang out from the sidewalk below, and Jenny looked down with a mix of dread and satisfaction to see the elevator capsule, with the Mantis robots still trapped inside, crumpled like a bronze soda can at the bottom of a crater twenty feet deep.

Sheldon leaned his head against Jenny's shoulder, looking into her face with large, quivering cow eyes. "I knew you'd come to my rescue, my sweet," he croaked. "I never doubted you for a minute."

Jenny rolled her eyes with disbelief – even now, slowly drifting down over the cityscape of Cluster Prime, Sheldon wouldn't give it a rest. Still, she was relieved that he was safe … _and_, she smiled to herself, _very_ relieved that Brad was safe. They shared a quick glance, and he gave her his huge, trademark smile, and she briefly wondered if he enjoyed being wrapped up tight in her arms like this. But then a troubling thought occurred to her –

"Brad? Brad, what about all the other kids from the bus? Where did they go?"

The smile on Brad's face instantly disappeared. "Jen – we don't know."

* * *

Massive iron gears slowly spun like the workings of a giant clock, turned by a series of colossal drive-shafts, each larger than a train car. Grime, steam, and smoke filled the air and dripped from the walls, filtering out most of the natural light that crept in from a row of narrow windows just below the ceiling. Row upon row of conveyor belts hummed nonstop, their low-level droning punctured every two-point-six seconds by the explosive blast of a steam piston. In perfect computerized harmony, a series of large metal stamp-presses slammed down on each belt, depositing freshly molded pieces for long-range laser rifles. This morning it had been spare parts for Wasp fighters. Last night it had been artillery shells for hover-tanks. Tonight, it would be … whatever the Cluster wanted it to be.

Hundreds upon hundreds of human slaves, snugly fitted with obedience collars, worked together in mindless unison, staring at the conveyor belts with dull, emotionless eyes. Each performed their assigned task under the watchful sensors of the unforgiving supervisor robots. The energy clip snapped onto the bottom of the housing. The barrel aligned with the notch on the stock. The regulator slid into the slot on the circuit board. Set the rifle down for the conveyor to carry off to the next station. The energy clip snapped onto the bottom of the housing. The barrel aligned with the notch on the stock. The regulator slid into the slot on the circuit board …

Miguel, Tamika, Jarvis, Bonnie … all of the students from Tremorton High had been worked to the bone since they'd arrived from the stockyards yesterday afternoon. In that time, they'd only gotten four hours' sleep, and had only eaten one measly bowl of gray protein paste; but nobody was complaining. Pteresa, Stephanie, Jantrice, even Brit and Tiff worked themselves into a sweaty mess, with blistered fingers and aching muscles performing the same repetitive assembly tasks, over and over and over. The energy clip snapped onto the bottom of the housing. The barrel aligned with the notch on the stock …

Chloe grabbed a smooth steel rifle barrel, and lined it up with the notch on the stock, just as her collar instructed her to. That was her task, that was her obligation, as a worthless sack of human meat. Service to her robotic betters. She was lucky to have her worthless life given meaning, by being allowed to serve the great Cluster Empire. Obedience was her life now. Her mind was empty of any other thoughts. There was no purpose in thinking about anything else … no purpose in thinking …

_Dear God, somebody please save us!_

The energy clip snapped onto the bottom of the housing. The barrel aligned with the notch on the stock. The regulator slid into the slot on the circuit board …

* * *

Continued in Chapter Eleven / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	11. Let Me Touch Your Mind

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eleven – Let Me Touch Your Mind

* * *

Jenny's feet gently touched down on terra firma – well, Cluster firma – and Brad, Sheldon and Dot spilled free from her arms, safely onto the steel sidewalk. A huge crowd of robots formed around them, staring in astonishment at the impact crater where the remains of the elevator silently smoldered in ruins. While she reeled her parachute back in, Jenny walked over to the edge of the crater, and cautiously peeked over the edge to look at the crushed Black Mantis robots. "Good riddance to those creeps," she huffed, dusting her hands against each other.

Dot clanked up next to her, nervous and anxious and scared out of her wits. She looked like her radiator cap was going to pop off. "Jenny … you just _totally_ destroyed four Black Mantis robots! Oh my Cog … you can't _do_ that! Th-that's against the law! You're in _big trouble_!"

Jenny grabbed her friend by the shoulders and spun her around. "Dot, we're _all_ in big trouble. You have to listen to me. Vexus, and her robots, are _evil_. Look, I know that sounds incredible to you, but it's true! She kidnapped me and my friends, and tried to turn us all into slaves!"

"That's right!" added Brad. "They took us to this whacked-out stockyard place, and ran us through a hideous car wash of horrors! Then these ant robots started fitting us with mind control collars …"

"Collars? You mean _health collars_?" asked Dot, still confused.

"Health collars? _Ha!_" sneered Sheldon. "They turned all the kids into a bunch of weird drooling zombie puppets! Just like in 'Revenge of the Undead Freshmen!' Jenny, they –"

Suddenly, they became aware of a loud wailing sound echoing through the urban canyons. A siren – no, multiple sirens – were racing in their direction. Jenny had no doubt that it was more Black Mantis robots, perhaps with the Cluster police force, maybe even the army. She was on Vexus' home turf now; she was outnumbered by millions, maybe even billions of warriors. With a whine of her motors, her wings and boosters unfolded again, and she waved for Brad and Sheldon to grab on.

"Cripes, we gotta get out of here!" she shouted frantically. "Dot, I don't have time to explain. You've got to give Allison a call for me – Drew's probably still with her. Get a warning to him. Tell him that Vexus knows we're loose, and now she's looking for us! You got that? It's really, really important!"

"Wait a minute," asked Brad, "who the heck is _Allison_?"

"I'll explain later, after we get away from _here_." She tapped a finger to her rounded chin. "Drew was supposed to meet me back at the hotel room, but it's probably not safe there anymore. We're going to have to find another place to hide out!"

Sheldon wrapped his hands over Jenny's left wing, held on tight … then did a double-take. "Wait a minute ... you and Drew got a _hotel room_ together?!? What the …"

But his voice was drowned out by a blast of rocket exhaust. Jenny's flying circuits were working again, and she shot back into the sky on a double plume of blue exhaust, with the boys hanging onto her wings. They flew into downtown skylane traffic, just as four sleek black hovercars banked around a skyscraper in a high-speed turn. Three of the hovercars poured on the speed, and streaked off in hot pursuit of Jenny. The fourth slowed down, and swooped to a landing just a few feet away from the large crater.

Two Black Mantis robots got out and sauntered over to the edge of the crater, frowning as they surveyed the damage. One of them noticed Dot, looking completely baffled, and overwhelmed by her close call. The tall, lean figure clanked over to the shivering young girl, with a stern look on his face.

"What happened here? You – girl – state your identification!"

"M-m-my name is Dot Matrix," she said, nibbling thin filings from the tips of her fingers. "And those two Black Mantis robots … they shot at me! _Shot_ at me! But I didn't do anything wrong! And the humans started _talking_ … and then Jenny said Vexus was evil … but that doesn't make any sense! None of this makes any sense! How can …"

The Black Mantis robot patted Dot on the head, and gave her a patronizing smile. Then he deployed a curved headband from his arm housing, and before Dot could say another word, he pressed it against her forehead … and the robot girl switched into sleep mode, with a blissful smile on her face.

"There there, child," smirked the insectoid robot. "Everything will make sense in a few minutes."

* * *

The skies above Festival Square turned a dark burgundy as the remnants of twilight faded away. Colored strobe lights came to life, and bathed the crowd in swirling kaleidoscopic patterns. A deep bass thumped from the giant stage speakers, energizing the dancers with a pounding beat. Drew was amazed; he half-expected a robot dance to be a bunch of automatons gyrating in perfect sync, like an automobile assembly line. He would never have expected to find exciting music, fun dances, and grand festivals on a planet like Cluster Prime. There were a lot of things on Cluster Prime that he never expected to find.

His pliable nanobot body had proven to be tailor-made for dancing; he wowed Allison with dips, twists, and overhead arcing leaps that left the crowd whooping with enthusiasm. Allison was twisting to the synthesized rhythm, her hair-foil whirling around her face in a halo of violet. She squealed in surprise as Drew grabbed her waist, and flung her into the air like a baton. After a few airborne somersaults, his arms curved out to catch her svelte form, and he gently set her back on her feet to a round of cheers, just as the final beats of the song finished up. Drew took a bow, hamming it up for the crowd; then Allison grabbed him by the hand and they ran off laughing like maniacs.

They stumbled into a small elevator capsule, which whisked them forty stories straight up, to an elevated walkway that weaved around the perimeter of Festival Square. Allison sprinted out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened, waving sarcastically for Drew to hurry up and keep pace with her. They ran a good distance along the walkway, passing copper statues and artificial plants, and the odd robot couple that had stopped to admire the inspirational view below. Finally, Allison came to a stop at a circular balcony, jumping up in down in victory as Drew jogged up beside her.

"Okay, now technically, see, that's what we call _cheating_," he laughed. "I think you deliberately tripped me back in the elevator."

"What!?!" she gasped, clasping her hand to her chest in mock indignation. "_Cheating?_ What a horrible thing to say! It happens to be _true_, but it's still a horrible thing to say!"

That corny line was enough to get another round of laughter out of them; the two robots were definitely stuck in "giggle mode". A minute later, Allison managed to regain her voice. "Ha, ha …. I thought … I thought that old woman with the vacuum-tube eyes was going to freak out when your hand went all gooey and turned into a can opener," she gasped. "Her fuses were going off like firecrackers!"

"Oh, yeah?" panted Drew. "Well, you're the one that was stomping on everyone's feet! Tomorrow morning, dozens of poor innocent robots will be heading into auto body shops, all across the city!"

"I told you I was a lousy dancer," she grinned, with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.

She strolled over to the brass railing at the edge of the balcony, and gazed out at the festival lights, enjoying the view of the public square and the forest of skyscrapers that surrounded it. Drew hung back for a moment however, gazing at a different sight; Allison didn't realize that she was being backlit by the last burning sliver of the setting Cluster sun, which surrounded her with a soft, rose-colored aura. Drew gulped hard, and his body shimmered with embarrassing patterns of silver-green. She was the most beautiful, most amazing girl that he'd ever met in his life – human or robot.

He wondered about that for a second; did it even _make sense_ that he should feel that way about a _robot_? Well, why not? After all, that's what he was _himself_. And for the first time since the nanobot accident – he didn't feel like he needed to _apologize_ for that.

And that was a fantastic feeling.

"This is why I wanted to come up here, Drew," she said, unaware that he had been watching her. "Sure, it's a nice view of the city … but it's an even better view of the _sky_." She pointed to the near-black zenith directly overhead, and the colossal planetary ring that dominated the heavens. It shone even more brightly now, still bathed in sunlight even as night fell on the capital city. From the brilliant brass-colored arch, flecks of light could be seen floating away, like glowing embers drifting from a burning log. They were Cluster starships, heading off to unknown destinations, thousands of light-years away.

They stood side by side and admired the ring, and for a few minutes, neither of them said so much as a word. Staring up at the infinite universe had a quieting effect on Drew's mind, and brought him back down from the ecstatic high of spending the day with Allison. But the stars also served to remind him of a cold, stubborn fact. Somewhere up there in that infinite blackness, circling a tiny yellow star in an out-of-the-way part of the galactic arm, was a watery little rock that he called home … along with seven billion human beings who hated his guts.

While Drew gazed at the heavens, Allison stole a sideways glance to watch the ringlight reflect off of his silvery face. She thought it made him look incredibly cute – but it also highlighted a hint of sadness in his eyes. She knew what he was thinking about.

"Can you see your home up there?" she asked, in a hushed voice.

Drew pointed off to the southern part of the sky. "I'm not sure, but I think that's it over there. That little twinkling yellow smudge, just above the tip of that giant antenna. Doesn't look like much from here."

"It's pretty," she smiled – but in her mind, she could only think about how far away it looked.

She rubbed her left arm absent-mindedly, and fidgeted with the seams on its housing. "How long are you going to be staying on Cluster Prime?"

_Just as long as it takes to smuggle thirty high school students onto a cargo ship_. He'd downloaded the flight schedules for Empire Express, the layout of the starship's cargo hold, even the price sheet and the customs forms for shipping "live cargo" like humans. He'd come up with a plan to hide with the cargo until the ship jumped to hyperspace, when he and Jenny would easily be able to overpower the crew, and hijack the ship to Earth. So they were ready to go, as soon as Jenny found the kids …

"I'm not really sure," he stammered weakly. "Another day, at least. Maybe two."

"Just a _day_?" she blurted out … then instantly regretted it. She felt stupid for asking; she knew when she met him that he was just visiting from off-world. "I … I'm sorry about that. I know you're just here for the Festival. It's just … I sort of assumed that you'd be here for the whole _week_." A frown formed on her face, and she started rubbing her arm a bit more forcefully.

He turned his attention back to her, seeing that her mood had saddened considerably. He clasped her hands in his, and swallowed hard as his brain scrambled for something to say. "Ally … Ally, I really had an _amazing_ time with you today. I mean … oh, who am I kidding. Ally, this was the most fun I've ever had in my life! It's definitley been the most fun I've had since I became a … uh …" – _oops, almost spilled the beans, there_ – " … I mean … it's the best day I've had in a long, _long_ time."

"I had a really a fun time with you too," she smiled, softly blushing.

"I mean, Cluster Prime is … is completely unlike anything I ever imagined!" He gestured to the skyline around them, and the glowing outlines of metal skyscrapers silhouetted against the dark purple sky. "You showed me so many amazing places and so many amazing things …" _And none of them are as amazing as you_, he wanted to say – but he lost his nerve, and his voice trailed off without finishing the sentence.

Allison pulled her hands away and started nervously rubbing her left arm again. She and Drew had been so comfortable with each other all day long – she'd never spent a day like this with a robot boy before. They had laughed an talked about everything, and now all of the sudden, she didn't know what to say …

She looked up and summoned up an _almost_-sincere smile. "Hey, look, I finally got to go to my first Festival dance! And I didn't even have to get my uncle Univac to take me. Now when school starts again, and that stuck-up little Casseiopia-386 in home room starts bragging about the big dumb robo-jock she's dating, I'll be able to tell her about my whirlwind fling with a shiny, green-striped stud!"

Drew's cheeks glowed with green fire, and Allison broke into a nasty giggle at his expense. He wasn't accustomed to compliments. But it was good to see her smiling again … although something she'd just said stuck in his mind, and didn't seem right. "Ally, you've lived in the city all your life, and you've never gone to this Festival dance before?"

"Well, umm … no," she said uncomfortably. "The … the guys aren't exactly breaking down my door."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" he blurted out. "You're _beautiful_, Ally!"

His face nearly drained itself of color, such was his horror as he realized just what he'd said. _Could you possibly sound any more stupid, you big idiot?_ But whether Allison thought he sounded stupid or not, the lavender glow on her metallic cheeks only intensified. Apparently she wasn't accustomed to compliments, either. But that just didn't make sense! Any robot guy on this planet would take one look at Allison, and describe her as a beautiful girl. It was perfectly obvious to him.

"That's really sweet of you to say," she said with a smile … an unconvincing smile, which told him that she didn't believe it herself. She rocked gently back and forth on the balls of her feet, and started rubbing her left arm housing again …

_She's been doing that on and off, all day, whenever she gets nervous_, thought Drew. _Why is she rubbing her arm like that? _"Ally, is … is there something wrong with your arm?"

Suddenly she grew quiet and ill at ease, and lowered her head, cradling her left arm. Drew grew concerned, not understanding whether or not he'd done something wrong. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Do you need me to take you to a mechanic? Ally, please tell me." But still he got no response. Was she malfunctioning? Was she angry? What was the big deal with her arm? _It looks just fine to me … wait a second._ His optical sensors ran a quick scan …

"Your left arm," he said hesitatingly. "It's one-sixteenth of an inch longer than your right one."

Allison's face blushed purple – but now it was the tarnish of shame. Drew couldn't believe it. One lousy sixteenth of an inch? That wasn't much more than the thickness of a dime! It was nothing! How could she be embarrassed about something as minor as that? Ally didn't strike him as the shallow type. Then he thought, maybe … maybe it was different for robots. Robots could easily measure things with an accuracy of millionths of an inch; Jenny did it all the time, and Drew's nanobots routinely measured distances down to the atom. Maybe, for a robot girl, having an arm one-sixteenth of an inch longer than the other … made her feel like a mutant robotic fiddler crab.

She looked up into his face with sad, tired eyes. "When I was two years old, I was in a bad monorail accident. My mom and dad got a few dings and dents, but I was damaged pretty badly. They had to rush me to the emergency room, and the mechanics worked on me for thirty hours straight."

Her pumps heaved with a heavy sigh; it was a difficult memory for her. "They had to install a bunch of new wiring, and new hydraulic pumps, and a new power core. And … " – her head dropped again – "… and they had to replace my whole left arm. It was crushed beyond repair. But they'd stopped making the right kind of spare parts for my model number; the LSN droids were all updated the year after I was built. So … so they took a new arm, and just tried to make it fit onto my old body. And that's the sad, pathetic story of LSN-1482 – the patchwork, junkyard robot."

Drew was stunned speechless; not a feature on his face budged so much as a micrometer. Allison looked at the shock on his face, and interpreted it as revulsion at her horrible misshapen hideousness. _Nicely done, 1482_, she frowned to herself. _No wonder they declared your model line 'obsolete'._

"I guess I must seem pretty silly to you," she said, her servo motors whining softly. "For a robot with a brand new, super-advanced body like yours, it must be hard to understand what it feels like to –"

"You feel like a freak," he said.

She blinked her eyes in surprise. "Excuse me?"

He gulped hard, his voice shaking like leaf. "You came home from the hospital and stared at it for hours, still not believing that it was actually attached to you. Late at night, alone in bed, you kept staring at, disgusted, like it was part of some alien monster that got grafted onto your body – some lab experiment gone horribly wrong. You felt angry, and cheated, and mad at the universe. Everyone told you that it looked fine, that nobody would notice … and you smiled, and said thank you, because you knew they were just trying to be nice. Then once the sympathy was over … then came the jokes, and the pointing, and the staring. You wondered how life could be so unfair. And whether they're kind or cruel, everyone makes you feel like a broken machine that's no good for anything. They make you feel like a freak. And after a while … after a while, you begin to agree with them."

She staggered backwards half a step, grasping the balcony's handrail to steady herself. "How … how could you possibly _know_ that?"

He shuffled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ally … Ally, I wasn't _built_ like this. I had a different body before this one … " – he closed his eyes and sighed heavily, remembering the trip to the hospital, and waking up from surgery to see only one lump under the blanket where there should have been two – "… then a few years ago, I was in a stupid car accident. I was 'heavily damaged', too. They had to cut off my right leg. I got a replacement one, just like you. And believe me … it wasn't as good of a match as your arm is. I understand what it's like to be a patched back together with different parts, Ally. I _know_ how you feel."

She couldn't believe it. Could this be possible? On top of everything else, could he actually understand what it feels like to be broken down … to be laughed at? "But … but then how did you wind up with the nanobots? Was it some kind of secret project …"

"It was an accident," he said, staring at the ground. "That's all. Ally, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nobody _wanted_ to make a silver-green ball of goo. I'm just a freak accident."

"Drew, that's a horrible thing to say!" she blurted out, cupping his cheek with her long, slender fingers. "You're _not_ an accident! When other robots look at you, they see a high-tech, state-of-the-art android … who's strong … and clever … and amazing …" – she gulped hard, and slid her hand to his shoulder – "… and sweet, and funny, and _cute_ … they don't see a patchwork freak, like me!"

He grabbed her hands in his flowing metallic fingers. "Ally, listen to me. Will you stop calling yourself a patchwork freak?!? Nobody looks at you and sees a freak. _I_ sure don't!"

Her eyelids fluttered with a soft _whirr _of tiny servos. "What _do_ you see, Drew?"

"I … I … I see …" Drew's mouth froze up, as Allison's large, oval eyes pierced him like a pair of white-hot needles. He felt the mysterious buzz-tingle in his circuitry again, just like he'd felt back at Mile High Tower; it was disorienting and fantastic, all at the same time. His mind raced like a runaway train, and his nano-computers flooded with a billion conflicting thoughts and feelings. He drew her close to his chest, his hands shimmering with nervous patterns of silver-green; her face burned violet, and her hands began to tremble as he spoke.

"I see a smile that makes me feel like I've known you forever, and makes me forget what it ever felt like to be alone. I see a pair of beautiful dark eyes, warm and inviting … two infinitely deep tunnels to some fantastic realm where the secrets of the universe are hidden away. When I look into your eyes right now, Ally … I can see the reflection of the moons, and the ring, and the stars shining like diamonds … and … and if I stare long enough … and deep enough … I think I can see my soul reflecting back at me."

The young robots stared deeply into each other's eyes, and the rest of the city blurred away into a featureless fog. The noise of the festival, the chatter of pedestrians; all of it ceased to exist. For a perfect instant in time, each of them was all that existed in the other's universe. Drew squeezed her smooth, metal hands, and felt the electric tingle again; to his amazement, Allison reacted at the same time – as if she felt the same thing. _I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening …_

Allison closed her eyes, and tilted her face up to his, receptively. Drew felt a charge of excitement and paralyzing fear that nearly reduced him to a silver puddle. He leaned forward, tilted his head … and suddenly realized that he had absolutely _no idea_ what he was doing. _Holy crap! I don't have lips! Should I grow lips? Wait … she doesn't have lips either! I'm pretty sure you need lips to kiss, don't you? Oh, crap, whatdoIdo whatdoIdo whatdoIdo whatdoIdo …_

But mercifully, Allison nudged forward the last half-inch … touching her smooth, curved forehead to his silvery brow, and gently nuzzling …

And the buzz-tingle started again, first in his forehead, then spreading throughout his face. A swarm of electric snowflakes danced around the edges of his mind, teasing and nibbling and caressing the ones and zeroes that flowed along his data pathways. Soft fingers of electromagnetic energy gently weaved into his network circuitry, triggering a mix of random images and sounds and sensor readings that grew into a beautiful spiral of data, an overwhelming sensation which defied his ability to describe. Some of the images and sounds were things he didn't recognize – they looked like scenes that took place on Cluster Prime. He heard soft whispers at the fringes of his consciousness, cooing and giggling sweet-nothings, that filled him with a warm comfort and joyful contentment. Then he realized that the whispers were in Allison's voice. And he began to understand what was happening.

Their very minds were embracing each other; fragments of data and memory from Allison's electronic brain were somehow intermingling with his nano-computers. This was a new, purely robotic sense he never knew he had before, a sense based on the flow of data and electricity, a sense beyond physical touch. This was a _robotic kiss_ … something that humans would never be able to experience. At first it felt like a blast of white heat, streaking through him like a lightning bolt from a summer evening thunderstorm; then the intensity subsided away into a billion tiny bubbles, as if an ocean of floating candles were glowing in his mind. It was more wonderful than anything he'd ever felt before in his life …

Allison pulled back, smiling and flustered, her eyes dancing with happiness. "For a couple of freaks," she smiled coquettishly, "that was kind of nice."

Drew grinned back at her, trembling himself now, and ran his silvery hand along her cheek. Somewhere, in the midst of the algorithms and nano-circuits that made up his android body, he could swear that he heard a heartbeat pounding in the middle of his syrupy chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she leaned her head against his shoulder, her voice-chip purring with an intoxicating _sigh_. He squeezed her tight and stroked her hair, and just let himself enjoy the buzz-tingle wherever their metal bodies came in contact. Then he gave her a huge smile, his eyes glowing with confidence behind his silver-green bangs. "They say practice makes perfect."

"My synthesizer-keyboard teacher used to say that," she giggled. "Of course, his lessons weren't nearly as fun as this." They leaned forward to touch minds again …

When a shrill electronic tone rang out into the night air, shattering the mood.

"Umm …Drew, I think that might be for you," she laughed, pointing to his eyes – which were softly flashing like Christmas lights.

He blushed green with embarrassment, as he realized that the noise was, indeed, coming from him. _Talk about your lousy timing,_ he groaned to himself. Allison marveled as a rippling wave of silver-green ran down his arm, and his hand stretched and oozed into a compact video screen. His thumb turned into an antenna, and the screen came to life … with the face of a teenage robot girl.

"Jenny! Hey there, how's it going?" _Leave it to Jenny, she's probably calling to tease some more …_

"Is that Jenny?" giggled Allison, jumping in front of the screen. "Hey there, girl! I hope you and Dot didn't have too much fun at the parade without us …"

"Drew! Allison! Oh, thank Jobs!" Jenny's eyes looked nervous and panicky, and suddenly Drew realized that this wasn't a social call. "I didn't know if I'd be able to raise your frequency here on Cluster! Where are you? Are you guys all right?"

"Yeah, we're just fine," he answered, growing curious and concerned. "Why wouldn't we be? Jenny, what's wrong? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Big time," she groaned, rolling her eyes. "Look, I don't want to broadcast a signal much longer – it might be intercepted. I'm sending a set of co-ordinates. You've got to meet me here, right away! And Drew – be careful. Everyone knows we're in town, now. _Everyone._"

The video screen flashed an image of a city map, then the call disconnected, and Drew felt a shiver run through his nanobots. _Jenny said that 'everyone' knows we're in town now. She must mean that Vexus knows we've escaped. Oh, nuts. Maybe Vexus' robots are chasing her right now …_

"Well, that was _weird_," said Allison, scrunching her face into a quizzical pout. "Do you know what that was all about? What did Jenny mean when she said she was in trouble?"

Drew gulped hard, unsure of how much to tell her. "Ally, I hate to do this. I really, really hate to do this. But I've got to go find Jenny. She wouldn't have called me if it wasn't important."

A look of confusion and concern came over Allison's face … then she folded her arms, and her dark eyes steeled themselves with stubborn resolve. "Well, we'd better get going, then. I certainly know the city better than you do. I recognize those map co-ordinates, and I can get us there in five minutes."

"Ally … I don't know if you should come. It might be dangerous …"

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you trying to ditch me already, Drew?"

His hair nearly stood on end. "_What!?!?_ No … of course not!!!"

She wrapped a hand firmly around his arm. "Then we'd better stop standing here wasting time, and go help Jenny, don't you think?"

He shook his head at her sly grin; he'd only known Allison for two days, but he'd already learned that she could be very persistent when she wanted to. He knew he wouldn't be able to talk her out of coming along, and he really didn't want to try, anyway. Hand in hand, and the two young robots sprinted into the night, heading for the far end of the elevated walkway. With the music of the Festival fading further and further into the background, Drew and Allison ran across a small glass-covered skywalk, and headed for the closest monorail station.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Twelve / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	12. Skeleton In the Closet

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Twelve – Skeleton in the Closet

* * *

A pair of eyes poked above the stack of gaskets at the end of Aisle Two, flicking left and right to check for hostile movements. Drawing guidance from every ninja movie he'd ever seen, Brad sprang from his hiding place and somersaulted into the shadows next to the store's front window. Glancing outside, he could see a loose scattering of Cluster citizens lingering about, and a few hovercars gliding by – but he also saw another pair of Black Mantis robots, ominously hovering overhead.

He snapped his face back just as a powerful searchlight swept past the window, blasting the interior with the light of a dozen suns. That was the tenth patrol to fly by since they'd gotten away from Vexus' robots. They'd found sanctuary by sneaking inside a small convenience store whose owner had shut down early for Festival; now Brad wondered how much longer even this place would be safe. He ground his teeth together, and tightened his grip on a piston rod that he'd plucked from the everything's-under-a-credit bin. "Any Cluster creep tries to get in here," he snarled, "and the Bradster is gonna bring the pain!"

"Brad, get away from the window before someone sees you," said Jenny, in a loud whisper. "We need to lay low until we find out where the rest of the class is!"

"Jen, I don't even know where _we_ are. How are we supposed to find the rest of the class?"

"Sheldon's got an idea." She arched a suspicious eyebrow at him; she always felt a _little_ suspicious whenever Sheldon found a reason to get close to her. "At least he _says_ he does."

"Not to worry, Jenny!" he croaked, grinning confidently at her through his overbite. "See, I got to thinking about those ear tags that the robots stamped on us back at the Stockyards."

"Don't remind me," grumbled Brad, rubbing his right ear. It had been almost as painful getting Jenny to take it off, as it had been to get tagged in the first place. "So what about them?"

"You see, each tag is etched with a serial number," explained Sheldon, relishing the chance to impress his lady love. "And I figure that the Cluster uses those serial numbers to keep track of humans, the same way we use serial numbers back on Earth to keep track of ordinary machines! Ulp … uh … of course, Jenny, just because _you_ have a serial number doesn't mean _you're_ an ordinary …"

"Yeah yeah yeah, don't sweat it," sighed Jenny. "But are you sure about this setup of yours?"

A monitor had extended from Jenny's chest, not unlike the one her mother talked to her with – but this one had deployed a computer keyboard along with it. A bundle of wires snaked their way from her belly-bolt, across the cashier's counter, and into a small steel box pried loose from the wall. The box was the store's central data hub, and Sheldon had jury-rigged a makeshift connector into it. He was entering commands on the keyboard, exploring the files in the store's computer system. There was a lot of useless data in there - grease sales, vacuum tube inventory – but if he could find a link to some kind of city-wide computer network, then it _might_ be possible for him to track down the students.

"Oh please, it's just an improvised cross-platform universal multiplexer/demultiplexer," he smirked, as his fingers danced over Jenny's keyboard. _Sigh … I'll never wash these fingers again._ He gazed up at her lovely metallic face, with moist, sparkling eyes. "It's really nothing, Jenny. At least, not for a brilliant misunderstood guy with unbelievable technical know-how …"

Suddenly a buzzing noise, which sounded _very_ much like an alarm, screeched from Jenny's monitor.

The data and graphics on the screen disappeared, replaced by an ugly flashing box which read _Firewall Breached – Virus Detected_. A faraway stare fell over Jenny's eyes, and her pupils dilated into tiny ice-blue dots. A drop of sweat crept down Sheldon's chin, and his fingers hammered the keys with renewed urgency. "Ummm … not to worry, Jenny. I can fix this ... I can fix this …"

Then the monitor faded to black, and a small explosion of sparks sprayed across the counter, accompanied by a yelp of pain. Sheldon instinctively flinched, then looked up to see Brad frowning at him, holding the frayed ends of the data connectors in his reddened hands. He had run over at the first hint of trouble, and yanked Jenny's wires free from the data hub – receiving a nasty shock in the process. "Geez, Sheldon, I thought you said you knew what you were doing! Jen! Jen, are you all right?"

Jenny gave her head a quick shake, and her eyes resumed their normal appearance. Fortunately, Brad had severed the connection quickly enough, and her anti-virus software was able to easily fight off the low-level snooper programs that had gotten into her system. But if the connection had stayed active for just a few more seconds … "Guys, I'm fine. Wow, that _did_ feel kind of freaky, though. Drew told me not to plug myself into any computers around here … guess I should have taken his advice."

"Jenny, I'm so sorry!" gasped Sheldon, munching his lower lip. "Oh please, please forgive me! I promise I'll never try to use you to hack into another computer as long as I live …"

"Don't stress it, Sheldon," she said, as the monitor retracted back into her chest. "It was a good idea. If we want to find the rest of the kids, we have to take a few chances. My systems check out just fine …" Then her sensors picked up the chemical signature of scalded flesh, and she noticed a set of nasty electrical scorch marks on Brad's palms. "BRAD! Oh no … you're hurt!"

"Pfft, I'm not _hurt_," he said, feigning a macho smirk. Then he winced and shook his hands vigorously, trying to cool them off. "_Yeeowtch!_ Although it _does_ sting like nobody's business."

Jenny deployed a spray bottle from her forearm, and squirted a layer of medicine onto Brad's scalded hands. She examined them with a medical tool that she'd deployed from a hatch in her forehead; thankfully, the burns proved to be minor, and would heal in a day or so. And apparently Brad's hands were feeling just fine, because now that they'd received their medical attention, they slid into Jenny's metallic hands, and his fingers interlaced with hers. "Just performing a little motor control test, _Doctor Wakeman_," he grinned, giving her hands a gentle squeeze.

She glanced up to see his carefree smile, which had the same effect on her as it always did, even here in the throes of danger. "Just be more careful next time," she giggled, as a hint of blue shaded her cheeks. "I'm picking up skin temperature readings that are _still_ above normal." Of course, she didn't think they were caused by the burns. And she didn't mention that her own oil temperature was creeping up a bit.

Suddenly playing the role of the invisible man, Sheldon inched away from Brad and Jenny, pretending to be interested in a rack of robot-themed magazines. He rammed his hands in his pockets and glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, grimacing at the way they looked so natural together. But it was nothing he hadn't seen a dozen times before, and everyone knew that Brad and Jenny were just friends, right? It was common knowledge. He told himself that every time he saw them sit in class together. And walk home from school together. And hang out at Mezmer's together. And go to the mall together …

A sharp noise at the door snapped Sheldon out of his moping. He heard the noise a second time; then his eyes sprang to the size of hubcaps upon seeing two figures silhouetted at the door. "Jenny!" he shouted in a loud whisper. "Somebody's trying to get in!"

Jenny's pigtails shot into the air; the mood instantly changed to one of dire emergency. "Guys, stay back and be quiet!" She tiptoed across the darkened room, and the boys ducked behind the sales counter. Now she saw the strange figures too – had the Black Mantis robots started door-to-door searches? She lurked in the shadows, hoping to avoid a noisy confrontation. _Just keep on walking, you Mantis losers …_

With a _swish_, the front door slid open, and a shaft of light pierced the empty darkness. Jenny froze in place behind a shelf of transmission fluid, as the mysterious figures walked inside. With a determined scowl and a subdued _clank_, her palm opened up, and deployed a set of metal tubes that extended into a blue-and-white baseball bat. She gripped the handle, wiggled the end a few times … and leapt from the shadows with a home-run swing. "You're headed for the cheap seats, _bug-face!_"

"GAAAAH!!! Jenny! Stop, it's me! It's ME!"

The bat screeched to a stop a half-inch from Drew's nose. He nearly keeled over from shock, and Jenny's war cry quickly gave way to a huge girlish grin. "_Eh heh heh heh heh_ …" She giggled nervously as the bat retracted back into her hand. "Sorry about that, Drew. I guess I'm just a little jumpy."

Drew clutched a hand to his chest. "I'd hate to see you when you're a _lot_ jumpy. What gives? You just told me to come over here. Who the heck did you think it was?"

"I _thought_ it one of the Black Mantis dorks who've been hunting me down for that past hour!" she said in an exasperated voice. "I didn't think you'd get here this quick!"

The second robotic figure stepped forward, and resolved itself into a feminine form – with a friendly, impish grin. "Well, we told the bus driver that we'd tip him five credits if he ran all the red lights."

"_Allison!_" shouted Jenny, thrilled at the sight of her new friend. The robot girls squealed happily and wrapped their arms around each other, bouncing up and down while Drew smiled and rolled his eyes at the typical female behavior. "Allison, it's so great to see you again! Listen, I'm really _really_ sorry that I was so mysterious with you guys on the video call …"

"That file has been moved to the _recycle bin_," smiled Allison, brushing Jenny's concerns away with a sweep of her hand. "Forget about it! When you said you were in big trouble, I got really worried. Drew and I got over here as fast as we possibly could. We actually jumped onto a moving hover-bus! That was kind of _exciting_." Her warm, dark eyes danced in Drew's direction.

"Well, you said the bus would get us here quicker than the monorail, and you were right," he laughed, returning the smile. "She _does_ know the city better than I do, after all!"

"Well, I'm just glad it was you guys, and not a pair of …" Then Jenny's voice drifted off in distraction, as her sensors picked up something … _different_ about the demeanor of her two friends. Her feminine intuition circuits blinked with frenzied activity, her microchips hummed with relationship algorithms … and a knowing smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. Drew was smiling broadly, his hazy eyes practically target-locked onto Allison, and she had her hand wrapped around his shimmering forearm, returning a dreamy gaze of her own. Jenny's knowing smirk blossomed into a beaming smile.

"_Well, well, well,_" she giggled. "So, just what were you two doing when I called you, _hmmm_? Hope I wasn't … _interrupting_ anything." Allison slapped a hand to her face, her cheeks in danger of bursting into violet flame. The green glow and the dopey grin on Drew's face gave Jenny all the additional proof that she needed, and she clasped her hands together with glee. _Squee! They're in love! I knew it! I knew from the moment they saw each other back at the Galleria …_

Sheldon poked up from behind the sales counter, like a nervous little prairie dog, clutching a big steel wrench in his hands. "If you n-n-need any help, Jenny, just g-g-give me a sh-sh-shout and I'll b-b-be right th-th-there … _oh_." He let out a huge sigh of relief. "It's just _you_."

"Hey, what is going _on_, Jen?" Brad jumped up and slid his legs over the counter, tired of hiding in the shadows. "I hear lots and lots of gabbin', but no clobberin'! Who are you talking to …" – then he recognized the silver-green android standing a few yards away. "_Drew!_ Hey, good to see you out of the barrel, man! What's shakin', buddy?"

Drew burst into a huge grin, and gave Brad a hearty slap on the shoulder – Jenny had failed to mention that she had found a pair of their lost friends! "All right! Man, it's _good_ to see some familiar faces! What the heck happened? How did you guys escape the Cluster drones? Oh, never mind, we'll talk about it later. The important thing is that you guys are okay! Finally, everything's starting to look up!"

"Yeah, well, if you don't mind, I'll save my celebrating for when I'm back in my front yard, sitting in my favorite lawn chair, ordering Tuck to get me a lemonade." Then Brad peered around him, finally noticing the mysterious robot girl. "Hey, um … who's your new friend, Drew?"

"_Heh, heh_ … Brad, Sheldon, I'd like to you meet Allison. Allison, this is Brad and Sheldon …"

But Allison was _already_ staring at Brad and Sheldon, her large oval eyes bulging out of their sockets like white basketballs. She swallowed hard, forcing a lump of hydraulic fluid into her pumps, but she didn't budge a servo. Suddenly Drew became aware of a faint metallic rattling sound, and to his astonishment, he realized that it was coming from Allison – or rather from her robotic joints, as she trembled with paralyzing fear. She silently babbled a string of phantom words, and pointed at the boys with a shaking finger, as if she was staring down a pair of Bengal tigers …

"H-H-HUMANS!" she finally screamed, as she flung her arms around Drew in a death-grip. "Oh, my Cog – _talking_ humans! _Talking_ humans! Running loose – without collars! Guys, we've got to get out of here and call Animal Control! We've got to get out of here before they attack us …"

"Hey, nobody's calling those Animal Control losers again!" protested Brad. "And what is it with you robots and _collars,_ anyways? _Sheesh!_"

"Whoa, Ally, whoa, _whoa_!" Drew held her tight and stroked her hair-foil, trying to calm her down. Normally he would have loved the chance to wrap his arms around her – but she was in near hysterics at the sight of Brad and Sheldon, and he couldn't understand why. "Ally, don't be scared! They're not going to attack us. They're my friends!"

She looked at him as if he'd just grown a second head. "_Friends?_ You mean they're your _pets_?"

"No, they're not our _pets_!" Jenny slapped her head in frustration; Allison was reacting just like Dot had earlier. This might be a problem …

Brad took a few cautious steps towards the nervous robot girl. "Look … _Allison_, is it? Just listen to me for a second. Do I _sound_ like some kind of dumb animal to you? Come on, I'm speaking in complete sentences and everything!" He held up his hand, and started ticking off fingers. "Check it out – one, two, three, four! Now, if I was an animal, would I be able to count like that? Uh … okay, wait a sec, I saw a horse at the town fair once that could count to ten. Okay … but a horse can't do math! Give me a math problem. No algebra, though. On second thought, I kind of suck at math …"

"Just … stay … _back!_" Allison hid behind Drew, looking as if she expected Brad to lunge at her with his fangs bared. "I don't care if you can talk and count and sing every verse of the Cluster national anthem! Humans belong in cages – or on a leash!" With a quick swish of her servos, Allison's hair-foil circled around her antenna, forming a dish transmitter. "Jenny, if you keep them cornered, I can call Animal Control and they'll be here in five minutes." Her finger hovered over the communications panel on her left forearm …

Then Jenny grabbed it, preventing her from making the emergency call. "Allison, stop! Listen, I told you that I was in big trouble. If you call Animal Control, the Black Mantis is going to show up instead, and drag us all back to Vexus' palace to turn us into slaves!"

Allison stared skeptically at Jenny, wondering if she'd gone completely insane. "Jenny … I don't understand … why would the Black Mantis be after you? And what's this talk about _slaves_? Queen Vexus doesn't turn _robots_ into slaves!"

Jenny looked at her new friend with crushingly sad eyes; Allison was growing more and more confused with each passing second. Jenny felt guilty for concealing her origins from her for the past two days, wishing she could have simply told her the truth – even though she still wasn't _completely_ sure what the truth actually was. She gestured for Brad and Sheldon to back off for a moment, and took Allison's hands in her own, speaking slowly and seriously, looking her directly in her eyes.

"Allison, Drew and I aren't part of the Cluster. We come from a planet called Earth, and Vexus has been trying to conquer it for a long time now – and I keep stopping her. But Vexus really, _really_ wants Earth for the Cluster Empire – in fact, Brad heard that she's going to launch a humongous invasion in just _six days_. Allison, Vexus is _evil_. I know it doesn't seem that way to you, but she really _is_. Her soldiers flew to Earth and kidnapped me, and Drew, and our human classmates at school, and brought us here to Cluster Prime two days ago. She was going to reprogram us into slaves!"

The Cluster native looked as if her CPU was about to overload; she looked into Drew's face with disbelief in her eyes. "_Earth_ … that's one of those barbarian planets, isn't it? Outside the Empire! And you say … you say you go to school with _humans_? But … but that's impossible!"

"Here on Cluster Prime, maybe," Jenny continued. "All the robots here think that humans are just dumb animals, but they're _not_. All the humans that you've ever seen in your life have been wearing _obedience collars_. I'm not totally sure yet, but I think they might even make them too stupid to talk, by lowering their IQ, or whatever. Queen Vexus _hates_ humans, Allison. She hates them more than anything in the whole universe, and she wants to turn them all into slaves. Cluster Prime has _millions_ of humans slaves on it already, working like pack mules! And Vexus wants even _more_."

Brad gestured to a red mark on his earlobe. "I watched the kids in my class get scrubbed, and tagged, and fitted with obedience collars, Allison. Sheldon and I were gonna get collared too, but then some weirdo mad scientist robot called 'dibbs' on us, and they took us away to use as human guinea pigs in a test lab! I think the rest of the kids got sent off to some kind of slave labor camp."

"I think we could track them using the ear tag numbers," said Sheldon, holding up the engraved metallic strips. "If we could connect to the Cluster data network, then we should be able to run a search and see where they got sent! I'm having a little trouble getting the network protocol figured out, though. Would _you_ know what it is?"

"Well, of course I do, you big silly, I connect to the ClusterNet all the time. The protocol is an asymmetric progression of geometric …" She smacked herself in the forehead. "I'm talking to a _monkey_ about data protocols! What am I _doing!?!_ This is crazy!!! All this talk about Queen Vexus … being _evil_?!? She's our queen, Jenny, and everybody loves her! And she loves us, and she protects us … she's the greatest leader robot-kind has ever known! Every robot _knows_ that!"

"Because every robot's been _programmed_ to think that!" shouted Jenny. "Including _you_!"

Allison did a double-take, and arched a suspicious eyebrow. "We've been _programmed_? Oh, come on, Jenny. How on Earth could we be programmed like that?"

Drew snapped his fingers. "Those backup headbands! Like the one on the bed-platform, back at the hotel. Remember what it almost did to you, Jenny? Oh, wow, those headbands could do it!"

Jenny nodded her head. "Every night, when every robot in the Cluster goes to sleep, they back themselves up with one of those little headbands. At least that's what they _think_ they're doing … but I think they're being reprogrammed, every night, to make sure and stay loyal and obedient to Vexus! Allison, yesterday we were all in an accident with Tank's convertible. We got hit by a Black Mantis hovercar, and nearly got knocked out of the sky! But Tank doesn't remember it – neither does Dot, and I'll bet you don't either. But Drew and I remember, because we _didn't_ back ourselves up. I think that whenever a robot gets mad, or suspicious, or upset at Vexus or her goons for _any reason_, then those memories get erased the next time the robot backs up – and they _forget_ all about it! That way, Vexus knows that her subjects are always loyal to her. You're being mind-controlled, Allison. You're a _slave_ – just like the humans."

Allison planted her fists on her hips with an angry _clank_. "So now, not only are humans suddenly _intelligent_, but on top of that we're all being _mind-controlled_, too? Knock it off, Jenny! Queen Vexus isn't evil. She's kind, and strong, and caring …"

"That's what you've been _programmed_ to think," shouted Jenny, flinging her arms in exasperation. "I've been fighting against Vexus and the Cluster for _months_, Allison! I've seen Vexus attack my school, my hometown, and even my entire planet! I've seen her assimilate innocent robots with mind control chips and _nano-ticks_. Vexus and her soldiers have attacked my classmates, my friends and my family … and now she's going to turn them into slaves, along with all the rest of the humans on Earth. And no matter how I feel about Cluster Prime, and my new friends here … I can't let anything happen to the people I care about … _back home_."

Allison clutched a hand to her chest, feeling like she was suddenly the only sane robot left in the universe. "This is insane! I … I don't believe you! Queen Vexus isn't … I mean … the queen would never do _anything_ like that! Jenny … Jenny, you're a _traitor_! How could you _do_ this? How could you betray robotkind like that … how could you fight for _humans?!?_ They're primitive dangerous animals … how could you ever call a human your friend? How could you ever _care_ about them?"

A tear trickled down Jenny's metal cheek, and pain registered in her large quivering eyes. Pain at being torn between her human friends and her new robot friends; pain at being called a traitor to her kind; pain at seeing how Vexus' evil had poisoned the minds of Cluster Prime. But she couldn't think of any other way to convince Allison of the truth. The Cluster programming was too strong …

Then Drew took a solemn step forward, and turned to gaze into Allison's confused face. He took her slender fingers in his silver-green hands, and heaved his shoulders with a heavy sigh. "Ally, everything that Jenny said about Vexus is absolutely true. She wants to conquer Earth, and enslave the human race. I know, Ally … I've fought her before. And if she's going to launch an attack … then I have to try and fight her again."

Allison's hands started to shake. "Y-y-you too? B-but why … why would you ever want to protect a planet of humans, Drew? How could a robot ever possibly care about a _human_?"

Drew closed his eyes, and spoke in a heavy voice. "You tell me, Ally."

A faint electric _hum_ filled the room, and the surface of Drew's body started to shimmer slightly, his nanobots pulsing with waves of silver-green distortion. He didn't change shape – but suddenly a silver-green wave washed over his body, and he changed his appearance, as if he'd been repainted by a phantom paintbrush. Now he was wearing a baseball jersey and a wrinkled pair of cargo shorts. His shiny finish was gone, replaced by the bland peach color of human flesh. Silvery bangs filled out into a mop of dirty blonde hair. And the right leg warbled slightly … and morphed into his old artificial limb.

"I told you I had a different body before the nanobots." Drew opened his eyes, hoping that Allison would forgive him for what he was about to say. "_This_ is what it looked like. I used to be _human_, Ally. I wasn't built in a factory; I was born in a hospital. I was a human student at Jenny's high school, and then the Cluster attacked, and I wound up getting infected with nanobots. So now I'm an android – but in a lot of ways, I'm still a lot like the human teenager I used to be. Ally, there's not as much difference between humans and robots as you might think …"

She yanked her hands free from his grasp, and took a few steps backwards, with a mix of horror, disbelief, and betrayal on her face. "Oh my Cog … you … you're a human …"

A sickening feeling swelled in Drew's throat, as the beautiful oval eyes which had just been looking at him with affection now stared at him with revulsion and fear. "Ally, please … just let me explain …"

She stumbled through the darkness, edging closer to the front door. "H-h-human … in a robot b-b-body … but … it's … it's not possible … human's aren't … they're not … I … I've … I've got to go … I've … I've got to get home … I've got to go …"

Then she bolted out the door and sprinted down the sidewalk, her shiny face buried in her slim metallic hands; in seconds, she disappeared around the corner of a featureless intersection, trailing twin streams of hot robotic tears as the panicked _clank-clank-clank_ of her footsteps faded into the distance.

A thick silence fell over the darkened store, and the joy of reunion, so prevalent only minutes earlier, was now replaced by a chilling gloom. Brad and Sheldon exchanged a confused glance, still not understanding what had taken place in front of them; but the sadness on Jenny's face was as plain as day, and told them that something very bad had just happened. Jenny wiped a tear from her cheek, still hurting from Allison's words, and from being rejected by the first robot girl-friend she had ever had. But she felt even worse for another friend right now…

Drew stood ramrod-straight, staring out of the large front window like a stone statue, without a hint of emotion on his face. The soft _whirr_ of Jenny's servos approached him from behind, and she gently laid a hand on his shoulder. "Drew? Are … you okay?"

"It's my fault," he said, in an ashen voice. "I should have told her earlier. It's … it's probably for the best. I was going to have to say goodbye anyway, right?"

His nanobots shimmered with activity once more, and a wave of silver-green washed over his human appearance, restoring his body to android form. He watched the last of the transformation flow over his hands, turning his fingers from fleshy pink to silvery green; then he looked up with wounded eyes, to ponder his reflection in the plate-glass window.

"Part robot, part human. Something for everyone to hate."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Thirteen / Six Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	13. A Rude Awakening

A/N – Two-thirds of the way there, folks. Once again, a big thanks to all you readers and reviewers – thank you tlegg13, Kraven the Hunter, BoneSatellite, Kar the Everblazing, Battybuddy, mpcp13, hyper monkey, Queenbean3, Specter Von Baren, La miseria y la muerte, Bohrok127, Randomessent, Paperwolf, Azurice, Saiya Woods, Zero-Nightmare, Vazura, Dark Rebel Master, EvilFairy42, and Rudy4 … and a special thank you to TehRindesayu, who just got out of the hospital after successful back surgery. It's not much, but I'd like to dedicate this chapter to you, little lady. Get yourself healthy!

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Thirteen – A Rude Awakening

* * *

Allison blasted through the doors of her apartment in a hurricane of emotion and tears, almost barreling into the thick iron chassis of her father, who was impatiently waiting for her with a stern frown of disapproval deployed on his face. She was hours past her curfew, and the glower in his eyes indicated that he was preparing to enter "lecture mode" – but she raced down the hallway, not even acknowledging either of her parents as she disappeared into her bedroom. Ignoring her father's orders to come out of her room _right this instant,_ she dove onto the foam mattress of her bed-platform, burying her face in the soft spongy pillow. Then she turned the volume on her music-pad up to its maximum setting, and let the latest tune from Electric Discharge drown out the woeful sound of her heaving sobs. 

But after a few minutes of wallowing in self-pity and despair, the music suddenly shut off, and Allison felt a smooth hand reach out to touch her on the shoulder. She rolled over to see the concerned eyes of her mother, who had quietly slipped into her room and now sat gingerly at the edge of her bed. "LSN-1482? Dear, your father and I were very worried about you. You're three hours late for your scheduled downtime. Please tell me what happened. Please … _Allison_?"

Allison smiled at the sound of her newly adopted name, and drug herself up to a sitting position. Her mother straightened out the wrinkles in her hair-foil, and deployed a squeegee from her wrist to dry the moisture from her daughter's cheeks. Then a warm, knowing smile came over her face. "There's only one thing I know of that can make a girl cry like that. It's the same thing that makes her act as giddy as you were when you left the apartment this morning. So … what's his name?"

A fresh waterfall of tears sprouted from Allison's fluid reservoirs. "I … I don't want to talk about it," she sniffed, hugging her knees to her chest.

"Oh, don't cry, my precious little clockspring." Her mother gave her hand a reassuring squeeze; she'd seen this little drama play out before. "You'll corrode your nice, shiny finish. Besides, any robot boy that would be nasty enough to make you cry isn't worth getting upset over."

"He's not _nasty_!" Allison snapped back in protest, surprising even herself. "I mean, he did make me cry … well, he didn't really _make_ me cry, so much as he made me really upset and I started _crying_ … but he really didn't mean to. I mean … you see, he said that … Mom, it's _complicated!_"

"Well, what happened, dear? Didn't he pay any attention to you?"

"No, he spent the whole day with me, then we went to the Festival," she sniffed, rubbing her left forearm.

"Was he mean to you?" A hint of anger crept into her mother's voice. "Did he make fun of your arm? Because if he did, _oooooh_, I'll hunt him down myself and grind him into …"

"_No!_" she shot back emphatically. "Mom, he wasn't like that at all! He was kind, and funny, and sweet … and a little weird, but good weird, and … and _romantic_ … and he didn't even notice my arm until I pointed it out … and even then … _sniff_ … he didn't seem to mind that much …"

Her mother raised a bemused eyebrow. "Wow, he sounds absolutely _horrible,_" she chuckled.

"Mo-o-o-om! It's not funny! He's not like … he isn't like … you see, he isn't really … _augghhh_!" She flopped back onto her bed, crying into her pillow. "You just don't understand!"

"It's all right dear, it's all right. We'll talk about this in the morning, after you've settled down." She patted her on the back of the head and walked towards the hallway, pausing at the bedroom door. "Now try to get yourself a little time in sleep mode, dear. I know you're upset, but you'll feel a lot better after a good night's diagnostic and backup. Everything will be better in the morning, you'll see." Then she turned off the lights, and shut the door behind her. "Sleep tight, my little clockspring."

Allison didn't answer, but fumed in silent self-pity for a while longer, sobbing in the dark for reasons she couldn't understand. She was confused. She was _so_ confused. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. Drew had seemed so wonderful earlier, and seemed to genuinely like her … and her first kiss had been amazing beyond anything her imagination algorithms had ever conceived. He was different from any robot she'd ever met before, but at the same time, he had so much in common with her. _Then_ … then he goes and says he used to be human. _Human!_ She shuddered at the very thought.

_Everything will be better after you back up. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law._

She flipped over on her back and pressed a button on the side of her bed, activating the nightly backup function. She stared at her ceiling posters as the curved headband deployed, and rewound her memory tapes to the heated exchange with Jenny and Drew – and the talking humans. _Incredible – I wonder how Jenny trained them to do that?_ Oh right – Jenny said that humans can talk and think, but that they're just being mind-controlled with collars to make them look dumb. And robot were being mind-controlled too, with the backup headbands! That just sounded ridiculous.

_Of course it's ridiculous. Now back yourself up. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law._

Then again, she never _had_ seen a human without a collar – which was a good thing, because everyone knew that uncollared humans were very dangerous. Well, except … except that Jenny's friends had been uncollared, and they didn't seem to be dangerous … and Drew was kind of human too, and he wasn't dangerous … _Drew_ … she gulped hard, as the memory of a magical evening came back to her …

_Of course they're dangerous. Now back yourself up. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law._

And when Jenny talked about being kidnapped, she was deadly serious – the same way she sounded when she told her about the backup headbands. Now as Allison watched the curved metal band slide into position over her forehead, she suddenly wondered – just why _did_ she back herself up every night? Why did every robot in the Cluster back themselves up _every_ night? Wasn't that a little excessive? If Jenny was right about humans, could she possibly be right about the headbands, too? Could she be right about Queen Vexus being evil? Why was this bothering her so much? And why couldn't she stop thinking about the feeling of Drew's smooth forehead pressed close against her face …

_Stop being silly. Now back yourself up. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law._

After all, would it hurt to actually _skip_ a night and not back herself up? It's not like anything bad would happen. That would _prove_ that Jenny was wrong …

_Back yourself up, NOW. It's smart, it's safe, and it's the law. The law. The law! THE LAW … _

_That's what you've been programmed to think_, echoed Jenny's voice. _But I think you're all being reprogrammed, every night, to make sure you're obedient to Vexus! Allison, you've got to believe me …_

The pumps in her chest pounded with panic as the headband clamped down onto her forehead, and her hands shook with terror as she fought to calm herself down. Something powerful was surging through her circuits, a mysterious overwhelming feeling, like a commanding voice telling her that she needed, needed, NEEDED to back herself up, right now. She stared up at the glowing headband, and a hypnotic glaze came over her large, oval eyes as the commanding voice whispered in her brain again. _Back yourself up. Everything will be better. You'll feel happy in the morning. You'll forget all about your troubles. Back yourself up. Do it now. DO IT NOW. It's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the law it's the_

The cyclone of voices, the haunting memories, and the conflict of churning emotions was driving the poor robot girl out of her electronic mind. She grabbed the backup headband by its thin flexible stalk, ripped it completely off of her bed, and threw it into the corner of her room in a fit of desperation. Then she grabbed a foam pillow and curled up into a ball, and cried herself to sleep.

* * *

A pair of worried robotic eyes peeked out of the tiny ventilation duct in the corner, watching two Black Mantis robots search the store with powerful x-ray scanning beams. Not only had the Cluster _not_ given up on the search for XJ-9, but their efforts had actually intensified during the night. The Black Mantis were doing building-to-building searches now; and as the first light of daybreak trickled through the plate-glass front window, the hideous Cluster robots were on their third sweep of the city block in as many hours. Jenny uttered a silent prayer: _whatever you jerks do, don't look down._

Quietly as she could, she retracted her eyes back down the ventilation shaft to the building's sub-basement, where she was hiding out with the rest of her friends. The underground stockroom had proven to be an adequate hideout, but it was only a matter of time before the Cluster secret police made their way down here too. As her eyes clicked back into their sockets, she turned to the boys and raised a finger to her mouth. "_Shhhh_. They're right above us, guys! We can't stay here much longer!"

Brad slowly stirred from his restless sleep; he was exhausted from the previous day's ordeal, but hadn't been able to get comfortable on the hard, metal crates. He cracked open a pair of bloodshot eyes and stretched the cramps out his legs. "Mornin', Jen," he smirked. "So when's breakfast? I like my bacon crispy, and my eggs over easy so the yolk is nice and runny."

She shook a fist at him, then broke into an annoyed smile. Typical Brad, trying to lighten things up with a joke, although she wasn't in the mood to laugh just now. "Maybe tomorrow morning, if we're lucky," she whispered. "Let me see if the guys have found anything yet."

Drew and Sheldon were sitting against the far wall, next to a junction box for an underground data cable. Drew's silver-green fingers had stretched out and plugged themselves into the junction box; he'd grown a flat screen and a keyboard out of the nanobots in his back, turning himself into a computer workstation on which Sheldon was pounding away with stony intensity. It was essentially a repeat of Sheldon's idea from the night before, but this time it was working; the nature of Drew's nanobots, and the adaptive software in his computers, made him immune to Cluster infection. The combination of Drew's nano-computers and Sheldon's hacking skills had allowed them to gain access to the ClusterNet, the vast computer network that blanketed the entire Cluster Empire.

Jenny snuck over to peek at the blizzard of symbols and graphics on Drew's computer screen. Sheldon was concentrating so hard on his hacking that he didn't even notice her approach; his hands only left the keyboard long enough to shove another handful of algae-flavored Human Chow into his mouth. Jenny clutched her metallic tummy in disgust, and the soft _clank_ of metal finally caught Sheldon's attention. "Oh, good morning, Jenny!" he grinned with a snort. "Isn't it great to be working together like this? Listen, I found the central files for the Stockyards, and I'm running a search on the ear tag numbers right now. Just a few more minutes, I should be able to tell you where the kids are! See, it's really just a matter of identifying a block of contiguous serial numbers that correlates to the population size of our class and our arrival time on Cluster Prime …"

"Sure, Sheldon, that's _great_," she said, cutting him off in the middle of his monologue. She didn't feel like listening to him ramble on just now – yes, he had worked nonstop through the night to find the students, and she was really grateful for that – but he had been even more eager than usual to impress her tonight, and while she didn't understand why, it was really starting to get on her nerves, figuratively speaking. She patted him on the head – even that small gesture was enough to bring a rosy glow to his pasty cheeks – and walked around to the android on the other side of the computer screen. Drew was hunched over on his knees, sulking off into space, grimacing like a silver-green gargoyle. He hadn't budged an inch in the hours since they'd moved down to the sub-basement.

She knelt down and looked into his scowling eyes. "Hey there … how are you holding up?"

For a few seconds, she thought he was simply going to ignore her and keep wallowing in his misery. It almost came as a surprise when he finally spoke. "Hey, I'm just sitting here on this crate like a glorified word processor. Sheldon's doing all the work back there, in geek heaven." Each word from his mouth dripped with bile and bitterness. "Glad _someone's_ happy to have me around."

Jenny put a hand his silver-green knee, trying to provide some measure of comfort. It was obvious that he was still hurting – heck, _she_ was still hurting – from Allison's rejection the night before. "Drew, she couldn't help herself. All the robots on Cluster Prime are brainwashed by Vexus, whether they know it or not. I guess … I guess that Allison just couldn't handle everything I threw at her, all at once." With a sad _whine_ of her servos, her pigtails sank down to her shoulders. "Please don't be mad at her."

"I'm not _mad_ at Allison, Jenny," he mumbled back, his eyes still staring into the distance. "How _could_ I be? She did something I didn't think was possible … she made me _glad_ to be a robot. She showed me paintings that are only visible in ultraviolet, and music ten octaves too high for dogs to hear. I discovered a whole new robotic sense that I didn't even know existed until yesterday. Jenny, yesterday, for the first time since the nanobot accident, not _once_ did I wish that I was human again. I'll never forget her, and I don't think I could _ever_ be mad at her. No, I'm not mad at Allison, Jen. I'm mad at _myself_."

"Huh? _Yourself_?" She gave him a puzzled look. "Why are you mad at _yourself_?"

"For deluding myself into thinking that someone like _me_ could ever be with someone like _her_."

Jenny blinked back a tear from her quivering eyes, unsure if she should give Drew a hug or punch him in the jaw to smarten him up. Fortunately, she didn't have to make that decision, because a sudden shower of algae kibble snapped her and Drew from their mutual funk. Sheldon jumped to his feet and punched the air in triumph, as if he had just won a heavyweight title fight. "Yes! I knew it! Those Cluster creeps think they're so clever, but their encryption codes didn't stand a chance against a guy who does six-dimensional calculus for fun on Friday nights!"

Jenny waved her arms frantically "Sheldon! _Shhhh!_ Black Mantis! Right overhead! Remember?"

"But I found them! Jenny, I found the class!"

That got everyone's attention, and Jenny and Brad bolted to Sheldon's side, as he called up a map with a few taps on the keyboard. A graphic of the Cluster capital filled the screen on Drew's back, with a single building highlighted by a flashing circle. Sheldon relished his moment in the spotlight – but he wished he had better news to convey. "They were sent to a slave labor factory in the industrial sector – golly, that's all the way on the other side of the city!"

"Nice job, Sheldon!" smiled Brad, patting him on the shoulder. "Now all we gotta do is bust 'em out!"

"No, _first_ we have to sneak past those Black Mantis creeps," Jenny reminded them. "And that's not going to be easy …"

Sheldon tapped a few more keys on his workstation, calling up a new set of circles on the map. "Not to worry, Jenny, this map shows every Mantis robot that's out patrolling the city right now. _Heh heh_, wow, this is just like playing the Gold Level of SpaceQuest Online! You know, if you give me a little more time, I _might_ even be able to figure out how to issue them some bogus new orders …"

Brad pointed to a group of moving dots. "Hey, maybe our luck is finally changing, guys! A bunch of them are breaking off from the search. Looks like someone else issued them some new orders!"

"What kind of new orders?" asked Jenny, feeling cautiously hopeful.

It only took Sheldon another four keystrokes to call up the information … then the toothy grin faded from his pimpled face. "Uh-oh," he gulped.

* * *

Her internal timer ticked off the final seconds of sleep mode, and then Allison's data drives spun up to speed, booting her operating system as she slowly creaked her eyes open. She stretched her arms to let fresh hydraulic fluid flow into her valves, and swung herself out of bed, dropping her feet to the floor like a pair of lead pipes. The daylight streaming through her bedroom window seemed harsh and glaring this rotten morning. She slunk past her dresser, not feeling like wasting time by polishing off her stupid face. No doubt about it, she was just as miserable this morning as she'd been the night before. That was strange, because she was normally a morning robot. In fact, she couldn't remember _ever_ feeling this lousy after waking up. Her sleep mode had not been as restful as usual for some reason, and that probably accounted for some of it … but she was also still troubled by the things that Jenny had said to her last night. 

Allison stomped out of her bedroom with a snarl on her face, with eyes that looked like they could have burned their way through the door. _Everything will be better in the morning, you'll see, dear. Shows what you know, Mom. Grumble grumble grumble._ She clanked down the hall to the bathroom, debating whether or not to take an oil shower, then decided she couldn't be bothered. _It's not like I need to look nice to plug myself into a stupid traffic computer, after all. Grumble grumble grumble._

Her father's voice called out to her from the living room. "LSN-1482, it is two point six minutes past your activation time. I need to see you out here immediately, young lady."

"Aw, _sprockets_," she huffed, heaving her shoulders. On top of everything else, she was _still_ going to be punished for missing curfew. She tossed her rivet powder into the sink, and stormed out of the bathroom. Hopefully, she could count on her mother for a little support. _Might as well get this over with …_

"Geez, Dad, can't you even wait until after breakfast before grounding me …"

Allison stopped in her tracks, and felt the oil run cold in her veins.

Four Black Mantis robots, members of the queen's personal guard, were standing in her living room next to her parents, all staring at her with unnerving sneers on their cruel insectoid faces. Allison clutched her hand to her chest in an irrational moment of fear, then felt silly for it. She knew, like everyone else, that the Black Mantis were her friends; they kept all robots on Cluster Prime safe, just like Queen Vexus did. Still, she couldn't understand why they were here in her home this morning. And there was just something a little … spooky … about those glowing red eyes …

"This is our daughter, Commander," said her father, looking glum and downcast. "She's the one who's been malfunctioning and … and saying horrible things about the queen. She's the _criminal_."

Allison's antenna nearly shot off of her head. "WHAT?!? Criminal?!? Dad, what are you talking about?"

Her mother dabbed a stream of tears from her cheek. "Oh, sweetheart, I don't blame you; it's not your fault for falling in with the wrong crowd. Commander, she's been acting strangely for the past couple of days, and we just didn't know what to do with her. We had no idea she was committing crimes and vandalizing Cluster property and spreading lies about the queen. She used to be such a good girl! She used to … oh, LSN-1482, how _could_ you do this to us?"

Allison gasped in disbelief, as her parents collapsed into each other's arms. "Wait a minute! Mom, Dad, I didn't do any of that stuff! This doesn't make any sense! I didn't …"

Her father slowly shook his head at her. "Don't make it worse by lying on top of everything else, young lady. Your mother and I have _both_ heard you spreading lies about the queen. And we _know_ that you spent all day yesterday spray-painting crude slogans on the buildings downtown. An LSN droid, defacing public buildings like that … you should be ashamed of yourself, LSN-1482."

Two Black Mantis robots suddenly materialized at Allison's sides, and looped their powerful claws around her arms, lifting her into the air. "But I didn't! I would never … wait, stop! I didn't …"

Mantis-6 glared down at Allison with an arrogant smile. "But of course you did, young robot. Your mother and father remember it … very _vividly_ too, I might add."

An impossible, horrific realization crashed down on her, as her processors digested Mantis-6's remark. A shudder ran through her wires as the sneer on the elite soldier's face intensified. "Th-They were given new memories, weren't they? My parents … they were reprogrammed when they backed themselves up last night, weren't they?"

The Black Mantis robot didn't answer her, but allowed a cruel chuckle to come from his vocal processor as they dragged the bewildered robot girl out of her apartment. Terror gripped Allison's circuits like a cold fist, and she realized that Jenny's warnings were looking less and less like nonsense, and more and more like the nightmarish truth. She began to struggle frantically, trying to wriggle free from the tall black-and-crimson robots, but to no avail – they were far too strong. She was being taken away from her home and her family for being a criminal … but she hadn't done anything wrong at all! She twisted around to plead to her distressed parents. "This is all a mistake! I didn't do anything! Mom, Dad, please help me! Daddy, please, don't let them take me away! I didn't do anything wrong! I didn't do anything wrong …"

"Perhaps you should let me be the judge of that, young robot," purred a cold, female voice.

Allison's face snapped back to the front door – and to the wasp-like robot standing majestically in the hallway, flanked by a pair of her private guards. An involuntary gasp left her trembling mouth, and she felt like her CPU was going to overload. "Y-Y-Your Majesty?"

Queen Vexus, the supreme ruler of the Cluster herself, was standing outside of her humble little apartment in the residential district!

Vexus gave Allison a wicked smile, and wagged a twisted finger in her face. "Tsk, tsk, tsk … someone's been a naughty little robot, hasn't she? I was waiting for you to back yourself up last night, child, but it appears that you never actually _did_. An LSN droid, resisting her own _implanted_ backup command? I do believe that's the first time I've ever seen that happen."

Allison fought to keep her composure in the face of the queen. "Is th-th-that why you're here? Because I didn't back myself up? Oh, I'm sorry, Your Majesty … I'm so, so, so, _sooooooooo_ sorry …"

"Oh, it's not for anything as minor as _that_, my dear," chuckled Vexus. "You see, it's come to my attention that you and your classmate Dot have made a couple of new _friends_ over the past few days. In fact, I believe you've run into an old _pal_ of mine – a darling young Earth robot named _Jennifer_. And if you had simply backed yourself up last night, then I could have gotten the information I needed directly from your mind, with no bother to you or your family at all. But now it looks as if a more personal approach is called for. I need you to tell me _everything_ you know about Jenny, my dear girl."

The queen's eyes glowed a dull, threatening yellow. "_Everything._"

* * *

Brad leaned over Sheldon's shoulder, reading the flashing yellow text on Drew's improvised computer screen. "Arrest warrant issued for LSN-1482, for failure to perform nightly backup. Also wanted for aiding escaped Earth robot XJ-9. Hey, Jen … do you know somebody named LSN-1482?" 

"That's Allison's serial number … oh, no …" Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth. "The robot girl who was here last night. Somehow Vexus found out that she was with us …"

Drew's head popped up, and twisted around to look for himself. "She … she didn't back herself up?"

"It says here that the Black Mantis is at her home right now," said Sheldon, "and they have orders to take her back to … _gulp_ … Queen Vexus' palace!" A shiver ran through his clammy skin at the memory of his stint in the secret lab underneath the palace complex. "She's scheduled to have her mind downloaded and … _yeesh_ … reformatted. Wow, that doesn't sound very good."

"They're going to hurt Allison?" Drew mumbled. Waves of silver-green began to ripple over his body.

"No way. That's _not_ going to happen," said Jenny, balling her hands into fists of righteous fury. "Allison was there for Drew and me when we needed help, and now she's the one who needs some help. She's still my friend, guys, and we're going to go after her."

"But how are we supposed to do that, Jen?" protested Brad. "You said yourself, first we have to worry about sneaking past those Black Mantis creeps upstairs …"

Suddenly Brad and Sheldon were knocked on their backs, as a river of silver-green fury blasted past them like a stream from a fire hose, launching itself into the ventilation duct. Before Jenny could say a word to slow him down, Drew's liquid body shot straight up the duct, and moments later she heard the clatter of a metal grate falling onto the floor. Then the Black Mantis robots shouted out warnings for him to freeze, quickly followed by the sound of high-speed laser fire. Jenny got the boys to their feet and bolted for the stairs, rushing up to the main level as fast as her servos would move her. Even at super-speed, it felt like it was taking forever to wind her way up the narrow service passage. She heard a series of loud crashes, and the sharp _clang_ of metal striking metal, and the sounds of debris being thrown in a thousand different directions. It sounded like a tornado was roaring over their heads. She finally burst through a small hatch and spilled onto the floor, rolling on her shoulder into a ready combat position. With a lightning-fast snap of her elbow, she deployed her laser-limb …

But she didn't have a target to shoot at. The store looked like the aftermath of a biker brawl; not a single shelf was left standing, and smashed merchandise was scattered all over the place. The walls and the floor were pock-marked with impact craters and splattered with hydraulic fluid, and a light fixture dangled from the ceiling by a single, fraying wire. In the middle of the floor, Drew silently stood with a look of cold rage chiseled into his face; his body was shimmering with frenzied patterns of silver-green, and four scythe-like blades had grown out of the middle of his back, their tips softly dripping pools of oil onto the floor. Jenny wondered briefly where the Black Mantis robots were, until she nearly tripped over a piece of leg housing that had been neatly sliced in half. It turned out to be the largest intact piece of Cluster robot left in the entire place.

Drew retracted the blades back into his pliable body, and glared at Jenny with a look of intensity that she had never seen in his eyes before. "Two Black Mantis creeps, taken care of," he said. "What are we waiting for?"

* * *

Continued in Chapter Fourteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	14. Traffic Is Murder Today

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fourteen – Traffic Is Murder Today

* * *

Skyscrapers flew by in a blur on the periphery of Jenny's vision, reducing her world to a narrow corridor that she navigated at speeds far too high to be safe. Morning traffic was already in full swing on the three-dimensional maze of airborne skylanes that flowed through the heart of the capital city. Jenny dodged around a trio of commuter hover-pods and nudged her way underneath a flying delivery truck, weaving through hundreds of flying hazards like a fighter jet avoiding anti-aircraft fire. With the extra burden of Brad, Sheldon, and Drew clutching on to her wings, it was a miracle she hadn't smacked into the side of a bus by now. She just needed to concentrate …

"C'mon, c'mon, fire your afterburners!" shouted Drew, tapping her on the shoulder. "C'mon, hit the turbo boost! Ignite the solid rockets! Run some red lights!"

"We're … going … fast .. enough," moaned Sheldon, who felt as if his clammy skin was being peeled off of his face. All the bobbing and weaving was giving his cheeks a dull green tinge …

"_Woo hoo_, this is coolness squared!" Brad shouted enthusiastically. "Come on, Jen, I know you can go faster than this! Faster faster faster …"

"Will you all just _shut up!_" she hollered … not noticing the giant billboard directly in front of her. Sheldon screamed and pointed at the last second, giving Jenny just enough time to shield her face as they smashed through the giant sign. The boys howled and hung on for dear life, throwing Jenny off balance as she unsuccessfully tried to straighten herself out. With an undignified _splat_, she belly-flopped onto a huge upper-story balcony, pinwheeling to stop underneath a dogpile of teenage boys.

"_Arrrghhhh!_ Guys!" shouted Jenny. "You're not making this any easier …"

"Oh no," gasped Drew, with a horrified look on his face. He pointed to another skyscraper on the other side of the street, where a long motorcade of official Cluster vehicles sat next to the 60th floor entrance. Six black hovercars surrounded a luxurious stretch hover-limousine, which was adorned with small flags and a royal coat of arms. The grinning wasp-robot standing next to the limo was unmistakable. It was Queen Vexus, ordering her Black Mantis robots to escort a terrified lavender-and-white LSN droid into an armored prison van that sat right behind the limo.

"She's got Allison." Jenny felt as if she was choking on the words. "We didn't make it in time."

They watched the royal motorcade pull away from the apartment tower and glide into the skylanes. Jenny didn't have to guess where they were headed; they were probably taking her new friend back to Vexus' palace, where an unthinkable chamber of horrors awaited her. According to Sheldon, Allison was scheduled to have her mind downloaded and _reformatted_. Jenny's eyes narrowed into a pair of angry slits, then she retracted her wings and pivoted her pigtails to flight mode. "I'm going after her, guys."

"All right, now that's what I'm talkin' about!" shouted Drew. "Let's go rip Vexus a new one …"

"Whoa, whoa, _whoa_! Look, there's no way I can do this if I have to worry about carrying _you three guys_ along with me! It'll be easier if I take care of this myself."

"WHAT!?!" Drew was livid. "No way! Jenny, I'm coming with you …"

"No you're _not_, Drew. Look, I know you're worried, but you need to _chill out_ a little. Besides, we can't just leave Brad and Sheldon all alone here in the city. And we still need to worry about rescuing the class!" She shepherded the three boys over to an elevated parking area at the edge of the massive balcony, where a black-and-yellow hover-taxi was patiently waiting for its next fare. "Drew, you and the guys head for that factory and free the kids. I'll get Allison and meet you there!"

And before any of them could get another syllable out of their mouths, Jenny disappeared in a blast of flame and exhaust, rocketing into the frenzy of traffic in pursuit of Vexus' motorcade.

Drew balled his fists in rage as he watched Jenny fly off without him. "Oh, no she _didn't_!" he howled. "She did _not_ just dump us off like a pack of kindergartners! That patronizing, bossy little …"

Brad looked plenty peeved himself, and thought that Jenny had been pretty condescending, but he decided to play the voice of reason. "Drew, Drew, calm down! Look, I know Jenny can be bossy sometimes. But she's got a point. You went a little _Full Metal Jacket_ on us back there in the storeroom."

Drew almost blew up right in Brad's face … then his shoulders sagged with a painful _sigh_. "Guys, you don't understand. If anything happens to Allison … it'll be _all my fault_. If I hadn't brought her with me last night, she would never have learned the truth about humans, and about Vexus … and she wouldn't be in trouble right now. Oh man, I'll _never_ forgive myself if anything happens to her …"

"_Ahhhhhh_," grinned Sheldon. "The anguish. The grief. The look of hopeless obsession in your eyes! Oh, how I know that look; I see it in the mirror every morning. You're in love with that robot, aren't you?"

"Look, can we just not talk about this right now?" growled Drew. "Everybody into the taxi."

"Shotgun!" shouted Brad, hopping into the front seat of the beetle-shaped hover-taxi, while Sheldon and Drew piled into the back. Drew tapped the short, bulky robot cabbie on the shoulder to wake him up from his nap mode. He flexed his clamp-shaped hands, and grasped the dual steering-sticks on the dashboard. "All right, where to, Mac … hey!" He gestured to the boys. "No pets in my cab, buddy!"

"Jeez, here we go again with the _pets_ thing," groaned Brad.

The cabbie nearly spewed oil on himself at hearing a human speak. He started to panic – then grew very calm, as a set of silver-green fingers wrapped around the back of his head. Drew's nano-computers were doing their freaky "interface" thing again, overriding the cabbie's electronic brain. The hover-taxi's engine whined to life, it glided away from the skyscraper's balcony … then the cabbie rammed his control sticks all the way forward, and Brad felt like he was going to turn into a pancake. Sheldon grunted in agony as his face flattened against the window. Dozens of hovercars swerved madly and honked their horns as the taxi corkscrewed across three lanes, far exceeding the posted speed limit.

"Hey, Drew, take it easy!" yelled Sheldon. "And this isn't the way to the factory!"

"Look, guys, Jenny's going after Vexus and her robots … _all by herself_. We can make a turn up ahead, and go to the factory like she told us to. _Or_, we can catch up with the motorcade and help her out. It's up to you." The look on his face told them what _he_ wanted to do …

And neither of the guys liked the idea of leaving Jenny alone, either. "So is there a gas pedal on this thing or what?" laughed Brad. "Floor it, man!"

* * *

Jenny threaded a pursuit course through the raging river of traffic with a mixture of raw speed and a dancer's grace. Then she suddenly came upon an opening, and realized that she'd caught up with the tail end of Vexus' motorcade. All good Cluster citizens naturally gave way to the queen's limo, to give her a smooth, unobstructed ride back to her palatial estate in the center of the capital. _Well, Vexus is gonna have one bumpy ride today_, Jenny grinned to herself. She nudged up the thrust levels of her pigtail-jets, sneaking up behind the rear hovercar.

She shot past the rear hovercars at blinding speed, before any of the queen's guards could so much as deploy a weapon. But she wasn't going to mess with the guards; she was going after the queen herself. Vexus had caused so much misery in her young life, had brought her nothing but grief and aggravation … and now it was time for a little _payback_. Jenny landed on top of the limousine, deployed a buzzsaw from her right wrist, and decided that Vexus needed a new sunroof. Mantis robots rocketed from their hovercars to defend their queen, but Jenny was already ripping through the inch-thick steel. She finished cutting the hole and dropped inside the limo …

Landing on top of a pair of surprised Mantis guards. Their programming kicked into emergency mode, and they deployed their sizzling electro-stun weapons … but Jenny already had her sawblade running at full speed. With a few expertly delivered slices, the Mantis robots collapsed into a pile of debris … and then Jenny saw her greatest enemy, and her eyes blazed with excitement, terror, fury, and confidence.

"I hear you've been looking for me, Vexus," she smirked. "So I figured I'd _drop in_ for a visit."

Vexus so rarely showed any kind of extreme emotion; when she did, it was usually anger or megalomania. It was the first time Jenny had ever seen surprise on the evil robot queen's face. There might even have been a hint of fear. It didn't last long, though, as Vexus quickly regained her composure.

"Well, well, Jennifer … going on the offensive, are we?" Vexus leaned back in her richly padded couch and propped her barbed feet up on an overstuffed footstool. She held a gold-plated cup in her serpentine hand, casually swirling the oil in lazy circles. "And right in the middle of Cluster Prime itself? Most ambitious. Care to join me in a drink? It's the finest synthetic blend, of course."

Jenny stowed the sawblade and deployed a laser-limb in its place, pointing it directly at Vexus' smiling, arrogant face. "Tell you what. Instead of that, why don't you just release Allison, send away your Mantis goons, and order us to fly to Slave Factory Forty-Six!"

The queen arched a bemused eyebrow. "Why Jenny, are you taking me as a _hostage_? How perfectly _diabolical_ of you! I'm so very proud. I didn't think you had it in you."

The laser-limb _whined_ up to full power, and Jenny allowed herself a satisfied smile as she realized that finally, _finally_, she had Vexus right where she wanted her. It was finally just the two of them, face to face, with no chance for her to escape through one of her stupid portals. She projected a targeting laser from her weapon, and a small dot of blue light danced about between Vexus' eyes. "I'll give you one more chance, robo-witch. If you don't free Allison before I count to five …"

"All right, all right, there's no need for name-calling," said Vexus. "Just let me order my driver to change course." She extended a spidery finger over her armrest, and pressed a red button …

Then Jenny felt a powerful, invisible force tugging at her arms. Suddenly it became difficult to aim her laser-limb; then it became difficult to even hold her arms upright. She lost her balance and fell backwards onto the front couch, her arms held motionless by some kind of magnetic force field. She struggled against the magnetic field with all of her might, but her arms were pinned to the seat as it they were welded there. Her confidence quickly began to evaporate, replaced with a rush of circuit-numbing panic.

Black Mantis robots dropped into the limo through the hole in the roof, with weapons deployed and lethal scowls on their insectoid faces. Vexus took a sip of oil, and gave Jenny a look of mock sympathy. "Hmmm, your little plan doesn't seem to be working very well, does it, dear?"

* * *

The black-and-yellow hover-taxi swooped around a delivery shuttle, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car as it sped towards Vexus' motorcade. The six black hovercars had jockeyed into defensive positions around Queen Vexus' hover-limo, and the Mantis guards seemed preoccupied with getting inside. Drew couldn't see Jenny, but it looked like the queen's thugs were rattled at the moment, so he assumed her attack strategy must be working. Besides, it was giving the boys a distraction they could make use of.

Streaking through the skylanes at a hundred miles an hour, the hover-taxi edged alongside the large, boxy prison van. The Mantis guard in the front seat turned his head with a suspicious sneer; then he snapped to attention as he saw a freakish silver-green android leaning out of the taxi. Drew's fist was warbling with tense energy, and he launched it through the van's window, clobbering the Mantis guard right in the jaw. Then Drew flowed the rest of his upper body into the van's front seat, starting a vicious fight with the guard and the driver – even while his lower body was still sitting in the back of the taxi.

But now the cabbie, suddenly free from Drew's control, realized the precarious situation he was in, and he tried to slam on his brakes. Brad and Sheldon grabbed onto his arms, struggling to keep him away from his control sticks. The hover-taxi swerved sickeningly from side-to-side like a water skier, tethered to the prison van by Drew's flexible body. They slammed against the side of the van with a bone-jarring jolt, knocking both of the boys onto the floor of the taxi. But just as the robot cabbie reached for his brake, Brad got a desperate idea. Yelling at Sheldon to hold on tight, they wrapped their arms around Drew's hips – and jumped out of the rear window, into the blast of rushing wind.

The frantic battle continued in the cramped front seat of the prison van, as if a kung fu fight had broken out in a phone booth. The Mantis robots pounded on Drew's body, slamming it against the controls and making the van lurch and roll like a rowboat in a typhoon. The three combatants bounced around chaotically in a blur of arms and legs and silver goop. Finally, one of the Black Mantis robots deployed his electric stun weapon – but Drew had already morphed his hands into a pair of nano-edged blades. _Schwick, schwick._ Two Mantis heads blinked with a moment's disbelief, and dropped to the floor.

It wasn't that Drew hadn't heard the guys yelling for help; he'd just been a bit preoccupied with the fight. Now he flowed his lower body into the prison van, pulling a pair of relieved teenagers in with it. They shoved the headless robots out the door. Sheldon dug his white knuckles into the dashboard, and Brad exchanged adrenaline-charged high-fives with Drew. They had taken control of the prison van!

Drew gulped nervously. "So, uh … anybody know how to fly one of these things?"

* * *

"Hold her steady, you fools!" Vexus snarled at her guards. "I'm not waiting until we get her back to the palace. It's time that XJ-9 got a long-overdue _attitude adjustment._" A small hole opened in the queen's twisted claw, and the barbed tip of a black assimilation dart poked out …

But even with her arms held motionless, Jenny was a formidable fighter. She battered the Mantis robots mercilessly with kick after super-powered robotic kick. Her leg housing snapped in half to deploy a nasty-looking drill, and she thrust it furiously through a Mantis robot's belly, narrowly missing Vexus herself as it came through the other side. But now her leg-drill was stuck, and the remaining two robots had her other leg wrapped up, and suddenly Jenny was trapped in a prone and vulnerable position. Vexus rose from her seat and took aim at the teenage heroine's chest with her assimilation dart …

And collapsed to the floor in a heap of robotic bodies, as the hover-limo lurched with a bolt-rattling impact. Something big and heavy had just rear-ended the royal limousine.

Vexus snapped her head up as she heard the _whine_ of a heavy engine shoot past her limo. It was the prison van, spiraling through the skies as if it was being driven by a madman! "What in blazes is going on?" she screamed. "Has that driver totally lost his electronic mind?" She climbed to her feet and stuck her head out of the roof, just in time to see the prison van make a looping, barely-under-control left turn at a six-way intersection. Hovercars of every shape and color swerved madly in a hundred different directions to avoid the runaway vehicle.

She pounded on the roof furiously, shouting loud enough for her driver and all of the Black Mantis robots to hear. "Do I really have to say it?!? Send out an emergency call to all Black Mantis units! And follow that van! Follow them! _Follow them!_"

* * *

Unsuspecting diners on the 90th floor terrace scrambled for their lives as the ten-ton prison van hurtled through the petro-café, scattering dishes and tables and chairs to the winds. Then the van lurched away from the building and back into the traffic pattern, blasting through three parked cars like a charging bull. It lunged down to avoid crossway traffic, screamed through another intersection … and took aim at a skywalk bridge, eight hundred feet above street level. The pedestrians nearly short-circuited with terror at the sight of the massive vehicle hurtling straight for them … then it pulled up at the last second, filling the air with the oil-curdling sound of scraping metal, as it glanced off of the skywalk's roof.

"Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this," grinned Brad, ignoring the pale expression on Drew and Sheldon's faces. He eased back into the driver's seat, working the van's controls as if they were joysticks on his GameStation 3000. "_Yeaaaap_, once you fly one alien spaceship, you've flown them all …"

"Yeah, you're a regular Buck Rogers," groaned Drew, bracing himself against the dashboard. "Just try not to get us killed, willya? Sheldon, you handle the navigation duties – get us to the slave factory as fast as you can. I'm gonna head back and check on Ally."

Drew flowed himself out the window, curling up on top of the van's roof. Then he morphed his hands into sharp claws, and held on for dear life. Brass and pewter skyscrapers whizzed by him at blinding speed. Engines and horns howled angrily as the van barreled through all of the proper traffic patterns. The wail of emergency sirens echoed from behind, as a dozen black hovercars banked towards them in hot pursuit. The queen's hover-limo fishtailed around a corner to follow behind _them_, and fresh Black Mantis units were pouring out of the side-alleys, converging on the van with the ferocity of a killer bee swarm.

He gathered his nerves and lowered himself over the back of the van; all Drew cared about right now was making sure that Allison was still okay. Maybe the Cluster had already re-absorbed her mind. Maybe she didn't even want to see him again – she _did_ think that he was a human-robot freak now, after all. He grasped onto the van's bumper and swallowed the lump in his throat. Then he twisted the latch-style handle, and rolled the back door up …

And there was Allison, sitting on a bench with her arms bound in a pair of steel manacles, chained to the wall, confused and scared and … trying to shout a warning. She was guarded by a pair of Mantis robots, one of whom was pointing the barrel of a laser cannon directly at Drew's chest …

A blast of light and sound exploded in his face, and the laser slammed into his midsection like a prize fighter's punch, ripping a smoking hole through the middle of his nanobot body. Allison screamed in terror as Drew was catapulted off the back of the van in a splatter of smoke and silver-green droplets. He sailed through the air like a cannon shell … and crashed right through the windshield of a pursuing hovercar, filled with murderous Mantis robots.

* * *

There were now six Mantis robots inside the limo, and they turned as one with their electric stun-weapons deployed, ready to subdue the struggling robot girl. Jenny doubled her efforts and pulled on her arms with all her might, straining against the magnetic-force shackles. The metallic frame of the limousine started to groan under the strain that Jenny was putting on it, but still she couldn't move her arms. _Geez, if I pull any harder, my arms are going to pop right out of their sockets! Right out of their sockets …_

She got an idea, concentrated for a second and … _snap-click-pop_. Jenny's arms detached at the shoulder, leaving her free to pounce out of her seat like a jungle cat. The limo rocked furiously as Jenny spun with robotic jiu-jitsu kicks that turned Black Mantis robots into heaps of gears and gaskets. She converted her left leg into a set of lawnmower blades, and reduced one Mantis robot into a cloud of tinfoil. Then she twirled and kicked the final robo-goon in the back of the head, sending him and his electro-weapon flying into the front couch. The couch's circuitry sizzled and smoked from the sudden power overload, the magnetic shackles sputtered and died, and Jenny's arms fell onto the seat with a soft _plop_.

With a silent signal from her pigtails, her arms came to life on their own, and crawled up her body to plug themselves back into her shoulders. Jenny was whole again, surrounded by a smoking heap of wrecked Black Mantis robots … and one evil robot queen.

Vexus snarled with anger, and fired an assimilation dart at her teenage prey … but the limo lurched, threw her off balance, and the dart harmlessly struck one of the windows. She prepared a second dart, but Jenny wasn't going to give her a chance to fire. "It's finally just you and me," she scowled.

She tackled Vexus in a crushing bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides with her powerful grip. The queen's eyes blazed with fury at the indignity of being touched by a commoner, and she surprised Jenny with an uppercut that nearly took her pigtails off. The teenager quickly recovered and delivered a very satisfying left cross that almost spun Vexus' huge head around in a circle. As the hover-limo hurtled through the city at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, two of the most powerful robots in the universe did furious battle inside, locked in a struggle that might possibly decide the fate of the planet Earth.

* * *

The black hovercar slalomed wildly through oncoming traffic, banked away from a cargo truck at the last second, and smashed through an aluminum traffic sign. Four Mantis robots attacked the slithering silver-green worm of nanobots with their razor-sharp claws, but grabbing onto Drew's body proved to be like grabbing onto a puddle of gelatin. Drew bent his body into surreal pretzel-shapes, desperate to avoid the electro-stun weapons, ignoring their peril as they side-swiped cars and rocketed through traffic lights. He felt himself slam against the roof from another mystery impact, distracting him long enough for one of the robots to blast him with a jolt of high voltage …

But he pinched off that section of his body like a lizard shedding its tail, letting it dissolve into ash while he morphed his hands together into a giant spearhead. Drew launched himself through the bodies of the four evil robots like a twisting javelin, filling the car with an eruption of oil and shrapnel …

Just as a volley of laser fire blasted them from behind. A quartet of Black Mantis air units was in attack formation behind him, opening up with high-powered laser cannons. Drew tried to get at the hovercar's control-sticks, but the lifeless husk of the driver was slumped against the dashboard, jamming the sticks in their full-speed-ahead position.

Another blast of laser fire ripped into the car, riddling it and the dead Mantis robots with hundreds of holes. Drew's mind raced for a desperate idea … then he came up with a doozy, and flowed his body through a hole in the windshield, oozing himself onto the hood of the hovercar. His nanobots pulsed with waves of silver-green, thinning and flattening his body into the shape of a tail fin …

The prison van with Allison and the guys was directly in front of him, hurtling through the skylanes like a runaway train, under laser attack by the Black Mantis. The queen's limo was directly behind him, crawling with Mantis robots and lasers of its own. More Black Mantis hovercars were approaching from behind – maybe as many as fifty of them, including the four that were attacking his car, and the two new ones that had pulled up on either side of him. The new Mantis units opened hatches in their roofs, and each deployed a huge particle beam, which pivoted towards him and hummed to life with a ruby glow …

But Drew had finished shape-shifting into a giant, silver-green rudder. As the Black Mantis units stared on in disbelief, he gave his body a hard twist – sending his car into a hard right turn. It rammed viciously into the front fender of the hovercar next to him, then with engines screaming, both vehicles flipped over on their side, and started to tumble through the air like giant dominoes. More Black Mantis cars slammed into them from behind, and those bounced off into yet more hovercars, and within seconds a high-speed pursuit had turned into a fifty-car mid-air traffic accident.

* * *

Jenny was surprised by Vexus' sheer strength, but the queen was used to having her lackies do the fighting, and Jenny quickly gained the advantage. She slammed Vexus' wasp-shaped body into the door, stunning her long enough to deploy her trusty power fist. Jenny wound up and delivered a crushing blow – but Vexus was extremely agile, and she deftly slipped out of the way just as the teenager mashed her fist through the limo's floor. Vexus wiped a trickle of oil from her cheek, and gave Jenny an arrogant smirk as the robot girl struggled to free herself. "You're fortunate that I like you so much, Jennifer. Otherwise, I'd dismantle you screw by screw for daring to strike me." She deployed another dart from her palm …

Then both of them were slammed hard against the windows, as the limo went into a sickening spin. Jenny heard a horrific crash, then another, then suddenly the air was filled with a deafening series of crashes that strung into one continuous roar, like a wave metallic thunder. The limo rocked from side to side as the driver struggled to bring the massive vehicle back under control. Jenny extended her neck sections to poke her head out of the roof, to see what was happening …

They were flying through a stunning, horrific ballet of crashing hovercars, a blizzard of steel hailstones slamming and bouncing off of each other like ping-pong balls in a lottery machine. Hovercars veered into each other and tumbled from the skies like so much dead weight. Others steered madly to avoid the growing accident, some smashing through skyscraper windows in the process. One black hovercar spun end-over-end like a tomahawk, crashing through the windows of a thousand-foot-high skywalk. Jenny instinctively ducked as she saw another disabled car spin towards the limousine, only to be T-boned by a delivery truck in crossing traffic, which narrowly missed the limo itself. Never had she seen more vehicles flying in so many directions at once. The urban canyons reverberated with the screech of metal and the whine of engines … and a loud, oddly familiar voice screaming out from above.

A shiny mass of silver-green goo fell out of the sky and splattered onto the hover-limo's windshield with a moist _thud_. Jenny shielded her face against the flying debris and deployed a pair of magnets from her feet, then walked out onto the limousine's roof, struggling to keep her balance as the limo driver flew blind. "Drew! Drew, you maniac! What the heck are you _doing_ here?"

The nano-goo gurgled and stretched into humanoid form, clinging desperately to the dented hood of the limousine. "You told us to go to the factory!" He gestured to the prison van, still bombing through traffic a hundred yards ahead of them. "We didn't like the taxi, so we decided to trade up!"

"You mean Brad and Sheldon are in that hover-van? _Cripes!_" Jenny quickly rotated her pigtails to flight mode. "There's still some Black Mantis cars attacking them!"

She wrapped her arms around Drew's armpits and ignited her pigtail-jets, and the two Earth robots leapt from Vexus' battered hover-limo, streaking towards their imperiled friends. Three Black Mantis hovercars buzzed mercilessly around the wildly swerving prison van, which was razed with scorch marks and laser burns. The rear door was still open, and they could see Allison being tossed back and forth in her chains, helplessly locked in her steel manacles. Even with chaos erupting all around them, the two Mantis guards were still watching over her. The queen's orders were the queen's orders, after all.

"If you can handle the guards, I can handle the hovercars," shouted Jenny. Drew nodded in agreement, and she flew them directly towards the back of the van. The Mantis guards took notice of her, and deployed a pair of plasma guns from their forearms …

But Jenny dodged their shots, and lobbed her silver-green payload at the van, banking away to deal with the remaining hovercars. With a quick twist of her elbows, her arms expanded into a pair of Gatling guns, and she unleashed a withering barrage of fire on the first unsuspecting Mantis unit. The noise from the brilliant explosion hadn't even subsided before she turned her attention to the second Mantis hovercar, and filled it with hundreds of screaming projectiles.

Drew sailed into the back of the van, his limbs wrapped around his body to turn himself into a cannonball. Allison gasped as a plasma blast came within inches of frying him, then ducked as he plowed into the chest of the first Mantis robot, knocking it senseless. He uncoiled his arms and legs and landed in a ready position, as the second Mantis robot brought his plasma gun to bear on the silver-green attacker. He fired a point-blank-range shot … right through the huge donut hole that Drew had formed in the middle of his body. Then Drew stretched out his arms, grabbed onto the door-frame, and morphed his body into a silver-green battering ram. He flung himself into the Mantis' torso with crushing force, and the evil robot flew out of the back of the hover-van, screaming as it plunged towards the pavement a thousand feet below. Seconds later, Drew tossed the other Black Mantis overboard as well.

The Black Mantis robots had been defeated, the heat of battle had faded away, and Allison was safe … but now Drew grew more nervous than ever.

He and Allison were the only ones left in the back of the van. They stared at each other with uneasy eyes … then Drew snapped out of it, and rushed over to help her. "Ally, are you all right?" he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Did they mess with your memory or anything? Did they _hurt_ you?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No, no, I'm fine … but what about _you_?!? Drew, I saw you get shot right in the chest! Are you hurt?!? We need to get you to a mechanic!"

"I'm a fast healer. Let's get you out of these things." Allison's forearms were enveloped in a casing of thick steel, with chains running around her waist to secure her to the wall. Drew held the casing and the chains in his hands, and let his silver-green fingers flow around the cruel restraints. His hungry nanobots gurgled and bubbled, gently dissolving the steel bonds into a tasty soup of atoms. But the awkward silence returned while the nanobots fed, and the two robots found themselves staring face to face, unable to decipher the thoughts that raced behind each other's eyes.

"Th-that's … that's a pretty neat trick," she mumbled, watching her chains turn to silvery sludge.

"Thanks," he gulped. "Uh … saves me a lot of time when I separate my recyclables."

The manacles dissolved away into a silver-green paste, and the chains clattered to the floor … and suddenly the only thing that he was holding onto was Allison's slender, beautiful robotic hands. But Drew just let them lay in his palms like a pair of lead pipes; he expected her to snatch them away at any moment. After all, the last time he'd seen her, she'd run away in terror, and he didn't want to upset her even more. Maybe she was already terrified to be so close to a hideous human-robot hybrid _freak_ again. "S-s-sorry," he croaked, pulling his hands away. "I didn't mean to …"

"Why … why did you came after me?" she asked weakly, dropping her face in shame. "You and Jenny risked your lives, after I said all those … those _horrible, horrible_ things to you last night … why?"

He lifted a hand to her chin, and raised her eyes to meet his once more. "Hey, hey … of course we came after you," he smiled. "Ally, if anything ever happened to you … I could never forgive myself for getting you into this mess. Ally, I'm so sorry …"

"It's not your fault!" she blurted out, bolting out of her seat. "Drew, you didn't do anything wrong! I'm the _moron_ who decided not to back herself up last night!"

Drew's knees nearly liquefied as he felt the wonderful, mysterious buzz-tingle in his circuits once more, and realized that she had clasped her hands around his arm. "Why didn't you do the backup?" he asked.

She squeezed his hand a little tighter, and looked at him with those fantastically warm, dark, quivering eyes. "Because I didn't want to forget you ..."

Then they flinched from the sound of one final, deafening explosion, falling into each other as the shock wave knocked the hover-van all over the sky. They could see the smoking remnants of the third Mantis hovercar fluttering towards the streets below like metal confetti, and the receding skyscrapers of downtown fading behind them … then they broke into a pair of relieved grins as Jenny swooped into the back of the prison van on her pigtail-jets, fresh out of things to blow up.

"Are you guys okay?" she yelled … then broke into a cherubic grin upon seeing her friends wrapped up in each other's arms. "Well, apparently so," she giggled.

Allison rushed to Jenny with remorse on her face. "Jenny! Oh, Jenny, you were right! Everything you said last night was _right_! Queen Vexus really is evil – my mom and dad are being mind-controlled, just like you said! I feel like such a complete _idiot_ … you must think I have vacuum tubes for a brain!"

"Allison, you had no way of knowing," said Jenny, trying to console her. "Look, don't worry about that now. I took care of Vexus' thugs, but there's more coming half a mile behind us … a whole _bunch_ more. We need to get to the slave factory to free our friends! Drew, any idea how close we are?"

"Just a sec and I'll ask," he said, morphing his arm into a short, silver-green blade. With a few quick slices, he cut a square section out of the van's front wall. The chunk of metal fell away, making a window into the front driver's cab, where Brad and Sheldon were still trying to navigate the skylanes amidst all of the excitement. Drew stretched his neck through the window, nearly scaring the guys half to death. "Hey, what's the word up here guys? How far till the factory?"

"Geez, what was going on back there?" Brad shouted, visibly annoyed. "Are you guys all right? It sounded like you were wrestling a rhinoceros or something!"

"Almost there," said Sheldon, scribbling figures on a piece of scrap paper. "We just flew into the industrial sector, and by my calculations, the slave factory should be right in front of us!"

"This is your captain speaking," grinned Brad, "please fasten your seat belts, and return your trays to their upright and locked positions!" He twisted the control sticks, nosed the hover-van into a shallow dive, and suddenly the towers and smokestacks grew larger and larger as they streaked towards a checkerboard of factories and storehouses. Sheldon pointed out the correct building, and Brad altered his trajectory to head for the front door of Slave Factory Forty-Six. A blizzard of flashing lights danced in his side mirror from the wave of Cluster hovercars that still chased after them. But the factory was only a few blocks ahead, and nothing was going to stop them now …

"Uh, guys, I just realized something," said Brad. "I have no idea how to land this thing."

* * *

Continued in Chapter Fifteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	15. Under Siege

A/N – By the way, a big thank you to everyone who wished me a "happy birthday". I didn't even realize that I'd been writing these MLaaTR fanfics for a year now until La Miseria y la Muerte reminded me. I've been writing these things for a _year_?!? Jeez, what is _wrong_ with me?

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Fifteen – Under Siege

* * *

Steam and vapor blasted into the air as the giant machine presses of Slave Factory Forty-Six spat out an endless stream of weapons parts. Oil and grime dripped from the ceiling girders, and white-hot sparks from the welding stations danced across the floor like fire droplets. Ten-foot ant-bots clanked along their elevated walkways, snarling down at thousands of pathetic human slaves toiling on the assembly lines below. Under the influence of their obedience collars, they labored silently in the service of the Cluster Empire, without so much as a whimper of protest. They were making thousands of weapons for the mighty Cluster army, an army that would soon eliminate every last infestation of humanity from the galaxy. The ant-bots thought the irony was marvelous.

The humans were no threat to the Cluster, but the cruel guards still delighted in reminding them of their place every now and then. One of the ant-bots noticed a gaunt-looking man step away from his wrenching station, grope for a tin cup, and dunk it into a barrel of warm drinking water. That assembly line's water break was not scheduled for another six minutes; such an outrageous breech of discipline simply had to be punished. The ant-bot smirked with a sadistic grin, and deployed a hissing, crackling energy whip from his forearm. It swished though the air like a bolt of lightning …

Then the factory's far wall exploded inward in a blast of concrete, shrapnel and plaster dust. The ant-bot snapped his head up just in time to see the front grill of a runaway prison van screaming right at him like a doomsday meteor. The crashing hover-van plowed into the guard and hurtled through a curtain of steam-vents, ripping through pipes and cables and large steel girders. It bounced twice, and finally slammed into a stack of cargo pallets, flattening the hapless ant-bot into a metallic tortilla.

While the smoldering van hissed its dying breaths, two stunned human teenagers extracted themselves from a doughy blob of silver-green gel in the front seat. With the structure of his nanobot body altered, Drew actually made a pretty decent air bag. Sheldon tried to stop his head from spinning, and Brad dusted off his hands, grinning proudly at the wrecked dashboard of his latest joyride. "Man, that was so _awesome_! I have _gotta_ get me one of these. I could get to school in, like, fifteen seconds!"

Drew's head sprang up from the shiny goo, and gave Brad a nasty look. "Okay, we're getting you a bus pass when we get back home. How's everyone in the back?"

"Ready to send some Cluster goons to the scrap heap!" shouted Jenny. She shot out of the van on the twin flames of her pigtail-jets, grinding her fists in righteous fury. The sight of countless human beings reduced to mindless zombies made her wiring sizzle with rage. The evil Cluster guards were on full alert now, and dozens of ant-bots were charging towards the wreckage. "Come and get it, you jerks …"

Four massive ant-bots deployed their plasma cannons and took aim … but with a blast of exhaust, a pale blue blur streaked into action. An amazing right cross sent two Cluster guards sailing through the air, and they crashed senseless into a steel girder. A vicious uppercut from the titanium teen sent the third ant-bot rocketing into the ceiling lights like a bottle rocket. And the fourth one got a Jenny judo-throw special – landing in a giant recycling machine, which ground him up into scrap metal.

A silver-green worm catapulted across the room and wrapped around the waist of another baffled Cluster guard. The ant-bot shrieked in agony as Drew dissolved his body into two halves that clattered to the floor in a puddle of gushing hydraulic fluid. Another guard attacked with his brutal electro-whip, but Drew flexed his body out of the way, and shot out another silver-green tentacle. It wrapped around the guard's whip-arm, and melted it off at the elbow.

But the remaining guards had a nasty surprise for the would-be rescuers. The lead robot deployed a microphone from his chest, and a pair of speakers ratcheted out of his shoulders. "Attention, pitiful human slaves! Attack the intruders! Your Cluster masters _command_ you!"

In eerie unison, every human slave in the factory backed away from their assigned stations at the conveyor belts. They had spent the last twelve hours assembling laser rifles, and there were thousands of completed weapons lying at the ready. Jenny gulped hard as a room full of emotionless human puppets each picked up a rifle, and pointed them towards her and her friends …

A hurricane of laser fire opened up, and Jenny had to backflip like an Olympic gymnast to get to safety behind the prison van. She cringed beside Brad, Sheldon, and Allison as a deluge of energy fire ripped into the van, vaporizing it bit by bit into metallic dust. A silver-green puddle flowed behind the van with them, and re-formed into a nervous android. "Someone wanna tell these idiots we're here to _save_ them?" Drew shouted, straining to be heard over the gunfire.

"They can't help it!" screamed Jenny, as a laser blast _zinged_ by, just above her pigtails. "The obedience collars are making them do this!" She peeked around the corner of the van to see thousands of soulless eyes slowly advancing towards them, a mind-controlled army that would overrun their hiding place in a matter of seconds. She even recognized the faces of her classmates from Tremorton High! But they were all just innocent slaves – and she couldn't fight back against them!

Allison winced as a shower of shattered glass rained down on her head; the poor girl had never been shot at before in her life. Suddenly, in the middle of her bolt-numbing terror, she got an outrageous idea. It went against everything she'd been taught as a Cluster robot – but she trusted her new friends now, more than she trusted the Cluster. She gathered her nerve, and spun her hair-foil into a parabolic dish, establishing an uplink to the ClusterNet. Her forearms unfolded into a pair of small transmitter dishes. Then she climbed to her feet, even as laser fire scorched holes into the van, only inches away from her body. Jenny tried to get her to take cover, but she just shook her head. "Guys, I think I can make them stop," she said tensely, "if we can distract them for a second!"

"Done and done," said Drew, launching himself into the air. A fountain of nano-goo sailed above the prison van, spinning itself into a giant silver-green bowling ball. The mesmerized humans pivoted their weapons upward, pelting Drew's malleable body with blasts of laser energy. Allison gulped hard, and jumped out from behind her hiding spot …

And transmitted a radio code-signal throughout the entire factory. The humans saw her out in the open, turned their rifles and … stopped firing. Their bodies shuddered with muscle spasms, and their faces grimaced with unleashed emotion. Then with a wave of sharp metallic _clanks_, every obedience collar around every neck in Slave Factory Forty-Six simultaneously _unlocked_. Moans of pain and agony arose from the stunned human crowd. They blinked their eyes and rubbed their heads, as if waking from some horrific collective dream. Then, as the realization set in that they were free from the mind control, they yanked their collars from their necks and hurled them to the floor. Now the factory was filled with three thousand free human beings … all armed with high-powered laser rifles. The ant-bots didn't have a chance to blink before they were mowed down by revenge-driven laser fire.

Jenny flew to Allison's side with a huge grin on her face. "Allison, that was amazing! You did it! You saved us all without firing a shot!

Allison blushed and shrugged her shoulders, as her body's systems reverted to normal. "I just logged on to the ClusterNet and looked up the instructions for the obedience collars, Jenny. I do stuff like that at my LSN job every day ..."

Her voice trailed off, as a crowd of excited human teenagers swarmed around them. Jenny's classmates shouted with happiness and wept from the horror of their experience – but mostly they were overjoyed to finally be free of the horrible collars. Jenny sighed with relief as familiar faces rushed to her with thanks; the students looked dirty and exhausted, but nobody was injured, and the prospect of freedom had everyone feeling a whole lot better. Miguel and Jarvis gave her a pair of high-fives, each swearing that her robot kung-fu routine had been wicked cool; Tamika and Ashley gave her a pair of tear-soaked hugs, thanking her for freeing them from their waking nightmare. Even Chloe wrapped her arms around her with a grateful embrace; suddenly she didn't seem to mind having a robot freak for a classmate.

Then a familiar accent wailed towards her like a broken police siren. It was none other than Brit Krust, crying like a preschooler and making a scene to end all scenes! "Jenny! Oh, Jenny, thank goodness! It was horrible! Absolutely _horrible_! They made me do … _sob_ … _manual labor_! You've got to get me out of this wretched, wretched place! Look!" Jenny had to suppress a chuckle, as Brit held up an ungloved hand. "A _blister_! Those nasty robots made me get a _blister_! Do you know how much moisturizer it's going to take to fix this in time for the prom?!? Oh, the _humanity_!"

Her cousin Tiff was right behind her, waving her arms frantically. "An' look at all this funky sweat an' grease all over our clothes! Look at my tee shirt! Ah've got pit stains! _Pit stains_, I tell ya! Like I was a stinkin' truck driver! Oh, I'm gonna hafta burn this shirt! I needs to get me to a mall, _pronto_!"

Jenny allowed herself a little smile at the Krusts' expense. "You'll have to forgive these two, Allison. They're not used to sweating anyplace outside of a health spa …"

But Allison wasn't listening to Jenny just then … she was staring in wonder at a group of her classmates, still feeling uneasy to be around so many "wild animals." Then one of the kids got brave enough to shake her hand and thank her for getting rid of her collar. Then two more added their thanks, then three, and soon Allison was overwhelmed with gratitude from the students.

"It's incredible," she mumbled, reaching out to touch Pteresa on the forehead as if she couldn't quite believe she was real. "You can all talk … you can all think, and feel … just like _robots_!"

"Of course they can all talk and think and feel," said Drew, wobbling towards the group. "See Ally, I told you there wasn't as much difference between humans and robots as you thought …"

Every face turned and gasped in unison at Drew; fresh from his stint as a distraction, his body with riddled with hundreds of small, smoking holes, from the countless laser blasts he'd been hit with. The poor fellow looked like he was made of silver-green Swiss cheese. Jenny just had to shake her head at him; she knew he could take a lot of punishment, she'd seen him do it many times before.

But Allison hadn't. She rushed to him with fear and concern in her eyes, and grabbed his arms, as if she were afraid he might collapse at any moment. "Drew! Omigosh, Drew! Are you all right?"

He placed a silvery hand on her shoulder with a weak chuckle. "I'm fine, Ally … really, don't worry. I'm built to take abuse. Give me a few seconds, and I'll ooze right back to normal."

To his amusement, she looked like she couldn't decide whether to be relieved or furious. "Don't you _ever_ do anything that stupid again!" she shouted, pounding her fist on his shoulder. "You could have gotten yourself killed, you … you big squishy _jerk_!" And before Drew could come back with another wisecrack, she crashed into his chest and flung her robotic arms around him in a crushing hug. To his astonishment, a single tear flowed out of the corner of her eye, and her voice spoke in a shaking whisper. "You could have gotten yourself killed before I had a chance to say … I was _sorry_ for running away."

_Did she just say … what I think she just said?_ A crooked smile wrenched its way onto his face, as he realized that this was _more_ than just concern for his safety. This wasn't the kind of hug you gave to a hideous freak; there was emotion in her embrace, like the kind he had felt from her last night, at Festival Square. A fantastic warmth coursed through his circuits as he wrapped his arms around her tiny waist, and squeezed her tight … then he heard an unexpected _snickering_ sound, coming from all around him. With a sinking feeling in his innards, Drew suddenly remembered that he was surrounded by his high school classmates. A few of them were pointing and giggling, and he felt his cheeks flash an involuntary shade of green – all this social attention was completely uncharted territory for him.

"I hate to break up this little Kodak moment," laughed Brad, "but now that we're all back together again – isn't this the part where we fly very, very, _very_ far away from here?"

Jenny was deriving an immense amount of entertainment from Drew and Ally's little soap-opera scene, but she grudgingly had to admit that Brad had a point. "Right, and we don't have a lot of time to waste. Drew, fill us in on the escape plan."

"_Drew's_ going to get us all out of here?" asked Miguel, disbelievingly. "Jenny, can't you just like … I dunno … transform yourself into a rocket ship, or something?"

She shook her head. "No, we have to get away from Cluster Prime in a spaceship."

"You guys found a spaceship to fly us back to Earth?" Jantrice asked excitedly.

A perplexed look came over Allison's face. "How in Cog's name did you find a spaceship that can carry three thousand humans all the way back to your home planet?"

"What the …?" Drew did a double-take, as his nanobots finished repairing the holes in his body. "_Three thousand?!?_ Ally, there's only, like, thirty kids in our class!"

"But what about all of _them_?"

Allison slipped away and gingerly walked towards the factory floor … where thousands of newly-freed human slaves were hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, and smashing their obedience collars to bits with hammers. Freed slaves were guzzling down buckets of water and chomping down the last of the food rations. Their disheveled clothing, long ratty hair and unshaven faces gave them the look of desert island castaways; their difficult slave life had given them lean, wiry muscles. Allison trembled a bit as she approached them; these humans certainly did resemble a pack of wild animals, just like she'd always been taught. She fought back a stab of panic as one of the slaves drew closer.

A burly, square-jawed human, an adult male of perhaps fifty years, strolled up to her and extended his hand. "Colonel Jack Crawford, Space Marines," he grinned, shaking Allison's hand vigorously. "Don't right know who y'all are, or why in tarnation a Cluster robot is helping us, but right now I don't much care. Thanks for getting those dang monkey collars off me and my men!"

Jenny and Drew walked over to stand with Allison, as she stared at the Colonel in amazement. "You … you were not born in the human stables here on Cluster Prime … were you?"

The colonel shook his head. "Hell no, missy! Our star cruiser was on deep space patrol five years ago when we ran into a fleet of Cluster starships in the Gamma sector. We gave 'em what for, but they had us completely outmanned and outgunned. They boarded our ship, took us for slaves, slapped the collars on us, and brought us all back to this _charming_ little slice of heaven." The grizzled military man gestured to the boisterous crowd behind him, with a scowl on his face. "Most of these slaves are crewmen from captured spaceships, just like us. Some of 'em have been here a lot longer than we have."

"You were captured and brought here as slaves … taken away from your families …" A look of fierce determination came over Allison's face. She gave Jenny and Drew a resolute stare. "We have to get _them_ out of here, too, guys. We _have_ to."

"And we are sure as shootin' ready to _get_ out of here," beamed the colonel. "I can't believe the brass back home _finally_ got the nerve to launch a raid on Cluster Prime! It must have taken hundreds of warships to blast through their defense systems! _Ooh-rah!_ So where's the landing zone? Where's the staging area? Where's the task force?"

Jenny awkwardly clutched the back of her head, and gave the colonel a girlish giggle. "Eh heh heh … well, there really isn't what you'd call a 'task force', if you want to get technical … heh-heh …"

The colonel tapped his hardened jaw. "Roger that, it's a special ops mission. Hush-hush! And you're some kind of new top secret military commando robots, right?"

"Well, not so much _commandos_," gulped Jenny. "We're … um … high school students."

The colonel blinked his eyes a few times. "High school students."

Drew chuckled awkwardly. "And we don't actually … uh … _have_ a starship."

After that little bombshell, thousands of angry eyes turned to glare at Drew like police spotlights.

"I was sort of thinking we could sneak off the planet … as … uh … _cargo_. Heh-heh. Y'know, like overnight delivery? Or your money back?"

The colonel leaned forward until his chiseled face was mere inches from Drew's nose. "Are you telling me that we're stuck on the most heavily fortified planet in the entire galaxy, surrounded by billions of evil robot killers … and you figured that you were just going to _mail_ us all home?"

"W-w-well, it seemed like a good idea ten minutes ago," babbled Drew. "Of course, that was when there was only going to be _thirty_ of us …"

Suddenly they heard a shrieking roar overhead, and the sound of high-powered engines whining in circles around the factory. Then another pair of engines screamed by. Then another. Then a dozen more, circling over their heads like jet-powered vultures.

"… uh, and we still had the element of _surprise_," he gulped.

Everyone's shoulders sunk in defeat, as one of the colonel's men came running up to him with the bad news. "Sir, the whole gosh dang factory's totally surrounded by Cluster troops, sir! There's fighter ships and hovercraft flying around overhead, and a whole bunch of hovercars and troop carriers pulling up on all sides of the building! There's gotta be three platoons of those metal cockroaches out there … and we can see a column of hover-tanks coming down the street, approaching our position!"

"Well that's just great," growled the colonel, snarling at Drew and Jenny with disgust. "You led half the Cluster army here, and you don't have so much as a flying taxicab. And you call yourselves a rescue party? What is your major malfunction, you metal maggots?!? I doubt we're going to have much luck sneaking past those roach-drones in a giant UPS box! What's your contingency plan? Do we dress up as pizza delivery boys and walk out the front door carrying large pepperonis with extra cheese?!?"

Brad patted his stomach. "Man, I could really go for a large pepperoni right about now …"

Another of the colonel's crewman shouted a warning. "Colonel! Colonel, two squads of roach-drones are advancing on the front door!"

A wave of gasps and groans rose up from the freed slaves, their short-lived happiness evaporating as they realized that their would-be rescuers were nothing but pretenders. But Jenny balled her fists in steely determination and hovered into the air; she was fed up with the Cluster, fed up with being chased and hunted, fed up with the colonel's patronizing attitude. She deployed a giant bullhorn from her arm, and shouted loud for everyone to hear. "Everyone, quick, listen to me! Grab one of those laser rifles, and hold off those Cluster soldiers! Keep them out of the factory for as long as you can! Believe me - we _will_ think of a way to get everyone out of here!"

The colonel didn't appreciate a teenager giving him orders, but in this case she had the right idea. "You heard the little lady, men! Grab a weapon and shoot anything that looks like a giant robot bug!" The freed slaves roared their approval, and scrambled to take up defensive positions along the wall of the factory, each toting a laser rifle with a fully charged energy clip. Some of them were ex-military; many were civilians who had worked on cargo ships, or were stationed on outposts and colony planets. Most of them didn't think they had a prayer of escaping. But they had all suffered terribly under the whips of their evil Cluster masters, and they were _very eager_ to give the robots a little payback.

Jenny dropped back down to the floor, landing alongside her friends. "Okay, I told them we'd think of a way to get everyone out of here. _Gulp._ So … anyone have any ideas?"

The three robot teens exchanged uneasy glances; Allison looked like an idea was brewing in her processors, but she wasn't sure if she speak up or not, for fear of sounding stupid. "Umm … well, if we need some kind of starship, the place to look is out at the spaceport," she said. "Except that there isn't a commercial spaceliner big enough to carry three thousand people at once. I'm not sure it's even possible … well, except maybe for … no, no, you'll think I'm crazy!"

"What is it, Allison?" asked Jenny, trying to encourage her. "Look, nobody's going to laugh … we're short on ideas and short on time! What's your idea?"

"There are some ships that could carry three thousand people … at Base Zero-One. The _military base_."

Jenny's eyes lit up as her memory banks kicked into high gear. "Those huge spacecraft carriers … I remember Smytus' ship flew over a bunch of big giant starships, when he brought us here two days ago! They were humongous … they could carry all of us, no problem! They looked like they were still under construction, though …"

"But they're ready for flight," said Allison. "I know … I had to straighten out some problems with the shipyard computer over at the base a few days ago. Those ships are going to be used to launch a Liberation Mission to free the robots of a barbarian planet in five days …"

"Five days?!? Vexus is going to attack Earth in five days," gasped Jenny, clasping her hands to her mouth. "Those giant ships are going to be used to invade my home planet …"

"Man, I have to give you this much, Ally," Drew said with a whistle. "You're not afraid to think big. So now all we have to do is figure out how to steal a spacecraft carrier. That's sitting in the middle of the biggest military base on Cluster Prime. Hoo boy."

"Wait a second," grinned Jenny. "That's not going to be a problem at all! Guys, we've got a whole bunch of Space Marines with us now! If we could get to the base, they could help us take over one of the giant starships and fly it back to Earth! Now all we hafta do is figure out how to get over there …"

"No, there's one more very important thing," Allison said in a somber voice, rubbing her forearm. "You need a get a set of special security codes from Space Traffic Control, to send to the automated Defense Stations up on the ring. If you try to fly off without them, forty-eight giant plasma cannons will blast the ship into atoms as soon as you get out of the atmosphere."

Jenny rolled her eyes in frustration – it was just one thing after another. "And how are we supposed to get these codes?"

"You won't _need_ to get them," she smiled. "I'll just do it _myself_, once I'm on board."

There was a moment's silence as Jenny and Drew digested what Allison had just said. Drew fought back a heavy lump in his throat. "Ally … are … are you saying you want to come _with_ us?"

The robot girl shuffled back and forth nervously, struggling with the biggest choice of her young life. "All of these humans … they've been stolen from their homes, their friends, their families … just like my family has been stolen from me." She looked up at Jenny and Drew with quivering eyes and a shaking voice. "I'll never be safe on Cluster Prime again. I know the _truth_ now. I know that everything I ever believed about humans, and the Cluster, and Vexus, was a great big fat lie. And for learning the truth, Vexus has already reprogrammed my parents … and she was going to do the same thing to _me_, before you guys rescued me. Now that I've been classified as a criminal, there's no place I could ever hide from her here on Cluster Prime. The queen is all powerful. The Cluster is everywhere. The Cluster is everything …"

She heaved her shoulders with a shaking _whirr_, trying to sound braver than she felt. "I may not have a future here anymore, but maybe I can have a future … on _Earth_. And maybe these humans can have a future too, back with their families. I always wanted to do something more important with my life than just plug myself into traffic computers. Maybe … maybe this is my chance."

Drew wrapped Allison's hands in his, stunned by the magnitude of the decision she had just made. She was going to risk her life to help get them back home. And she wanted to come … with _him_. He stared into her magnificent ebony eyes, filled with excitement and terror and nervousness, all at once. "Ally … I … I don't know what to say ..."

"Say you'll buy me a silicone smoothie once we get to … 'Tremorton'," she giggled.

He broke into an enormous grin, and plunged forward, surprising both of them as he cupped her cheeks in his hands, and brought his silvery face to rest against her smooth forehead. The buzz-tingle pulsed through Ally's circuits instantly, bringing soft gasps of pleasure from her voice box. The mind-kiss felt even more natural to both of them now, and their thoughts began to interweave more deeply, seamlessly flowing into a magnificent whole, caressing each other's mental circuits with bits and bytes and flickering electric impulses. He soothed her troubled microchips with a hundred whispered things he dare not say in public, telling her she was beautiful and heroic and the bravest person he'd ever met. He stroked her emotion algorithms reassuringly, and made her a solemn promise: _As long as I live, Vexus will never, never lay a finger on you. I won't let her hurt you, Ally._ His mind bubbled with fireflies of delight when that promise made her cheeks blush with a lavender glow.

The students surrounding them looked on with puzzled curiosity, as the robots gently nuzzled their foreheads together, but a few of the girls figured out what was going on … including Jenny, who had to deploy a pair of wipers over her eyes …

But the tender scene was disrupted by a burst of laser fire erupting from the near wall. A group of cargo pilots had opened up on a squad of Cluster roach-drones, driving them back from the factory entrance. Then another staccato blast of lasers rang out from the opposite wall. The humans ducked for cover as a hail of crimson laser fire ripped through windows. Scattered gunfire began to escalate into a full-fledged battle; the Cluster soldiers were launching an all-out assault on the slave factory.

With a lightning-fast series of _clicks_ and _snaps_, Jenny deployed a plethora of laser cannons, machine guns, particle beams, and missile launchers from a dozen hidden compartments on her robotic body. "Looks like we just ran out of time, guys," she frowned, as her pigtails rotated to business mode. "Drew, you'd better come up with some way to get us to Base Zero-One, _fast_!" Her fusion turbines blasted to life, and Jenny shot off to help the Space Marines fight off the Cluster attackers.

"Man, oh man, oh man," grimaced Drew, flinching from the screech of laser gunfire. "Ally, can you think of any other way for us to the base from here? Maybe a subway tunnel that runs underneath the factory? An abandoned pipeline? Anything?"

She crouched down as another laser bolt sizzled over her head, just missing her antenna. "No, there's nothing within a mile of this building! The only way to get there is by hovercar, or by bus, or maybe by monorail. I might be able to send instructions to have a train diverted to the nearest station … of course, um, that leaves the tiny problem of actually _getting_ to the nearest station …"

Drew clenched his eyes and pounded his fists against his head, desperately trying to brainstorm a way to get them out of this mess. But he wasn't coming up with any decent ideas at all! Allison knew all about the Cluster and its defense networks, Jenny had awesome strength and firepower, and even the human slaves were pitching in to fight for their collective freedom – the only one who wasn't pulling his weight around here was _him_. His nano-computers buzzed furiously, trying to come up with a solution. How were they supposed to get to the military base? How do you move three thousand people over ten miles, when you're surrounded by the Cluster army? It was _impossible_ –

"_Grenade!_" shouted a panicked voice, and suddenly a softball-sized metal sphere sailed through the window and bounced along the floor, heading straight for the high school students. Drew gasped in horror and instinctively flowed into action, throwing out a silver-green tentacle that wrapped around the Cluster grenade on its third bounce. He sucked the tentacle back into his body and absorbed the grenade, and everyone plugged their ears for the horrible explosion … which never came. The atoms in the grenade, and even the chemicals in the explosives, had been broken down and absorbed by Drew's busy little nanobots. He smiled and patted his stomach, actually feeling a little better after the quick snack. Sometimes he forgot just how versatile those nanobots could be. They could eat just about anything.

Anything at all.

Suddenly an amazing idea came to him. He nearly fell over backwards, such was the enormity of its stupidity; but desperate times called for desperate measures, and insane times called for insane measures. He ran a quick series of checks through his computers, and couldn't immediately think of a reason his idea wouldn't work. Well, except for the fact that it was just plain _nuts_.

"Drew?" asked Allison. "What is it?"

The slaves unleashed another volley of withering laser fire on the Cluster drones, filling the air with high-pitched _shrieks_, and making it difficult to hear himself think. "No time to explain!" he shouted. "Go find Jenny, and tell her I'm gonna need five … no … ten minutes! If she can hold off Vexus and her goons until then, I think I can get us to the base!"

"How in the world are you going to do _that_?"

Drew told her.

Allison's face twisted into a stare of disbelief. "You've got to be _joking!!!_"

"Just find Jenny! I've got to get started … if I wait any longer, we're going to run out of time!"

The bitter firefight raged on, as the Space Marines hosed down dozens of Cluster roach-drones with their laser rifles, and Jenny swooped overhead with her laser-limbs and particle beams, holding off the tanks and the fighter-wasps. The whole factory shook from the impact of energy beams and heavy weapons fire; cracks ran along the walls and the ceiling, and each deafening blast shook loose a fresh shower of dust and plaster. Drew sprinted past his cowering classmates, past the factory's giant machine presses, past the conveyor belts and the welding stations, until he reached the very center of Slave Factory Forty-Six. A group of towering vertical pipes stood in the middle of the floor, rising up to the ceiling like a grove of stainless steel tree trunks. The piping twisted and looped all over the factory, carrying energy and material to every corner of the building. There was a large valve at the bottom of one of the tall pipes, sticking out like a giant water faucet. Drew took a moment to calm himself, and his body began to shimmer with rippling patterns of silver-green. He softened and morphed into a pillar of silvery liquid … then with a syrupy _schwerrrp_, he flowed inside the valve and disappeared from sight.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Sixteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	16. Oh No, There Goes Tokyo

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Sixteen – Oh No, There Goes Tokyo

* * *

The battered royal hover-limousine limped to a landing only a block away from the raging firefight at Slave Factory Forty-Six. Queen Vexus flew out of the hole in the roof and glided towards the battle scene, with her Black Mantis bodyguards scrambling to keep up with her. A demonic snarl marred the queen's face as she approached a hastily arranged command post, wondering how much more grief XJ-9 could possibly cause her today. Two hundred roach-drones had already surrounded the twenty-story building where Jenny and the slaves were holed up, and the access roads leading to the factory were filled with military transports and hover-tanks. In the background, she could see a torrent of laser bolts screeching back and forth between her drone soldiers and the rebelling slaves. And fighting at the humans' side was an infuriatingly stubborn teenage robot, with her arms transformed into a pair of fifty-millimeter cannons. Vexus shook her head and groaned; it was time to put a stop to this little uprising.

Commander Smytus had taken command on the scene, barking out orders to his platoon of roach-drones, when he saw Vexus and her entourage draw near. He swept his arm in an obsequious bow, and shot a sarcastic sneer at her Black Mantis bodyguard; she was well aware that they did not care for each other, but she was not in the mood to listen to her lackeys snipe at each other right now. Before they could start arguing, Vexus silenced both of them with a look that could melt titanium. "Get the hover-tanks into position," she growled, "I'm through wasting time and drones battling with XJ-9. We will exploit the same weakness that has always plagued her: her foolish love of animals. This ends _now_."

Vexus stood cold and statue-like as she watched a dozen hover-tanks _whine_ by, adding another ring of firepower to the formidable force which encircled the slave factory. Vexus had a very simple plan for ending the standoff. The human slaves were dug in and well armed, which would make it difficult for the roach-drones to storm the factory and recapture it. But Vexus had no intention of trying to recapture the factory. She was going to _flatten_ it. The queen gave a signal with a nod of her head, and the huge hover-tanks lowered their cannon barrels in unison, locking onto the factory's first floor windows.

The queen smiled with satisfaction at the look of horror on Jenny's face, as the tank cannons growled to life, and flecks of crimson energy danced along their massive barrel coils. The roach-drones ceased fire and pulled back to make way for the carnage that was about to be unleashed upon the building. The humans turned their laser rifles towards the tanks in a desperate attempt to stave off the attack, but the lasers deflected harmlessly off of their heavy armor. The cannons reached maximum charge, and Vexus raised her arm in the air, ready to give the command to fire …

"Wait!" screamed Jenny. Her cannons retracted back into her arms. "Stop! Don't shoot!"

The humans stopped shooting, and a tense silence fell over the combat scene. Vexus was practically purring with glee; she knew that Jenny wouldn't risk the lives of the pathetic humans she cared for so much. The queen took a single step forward and raised her authoritative voice. "You've nearly exhausted my benevolent supply of patience, Jennifer," she announced, "so I will make this very simple. Come out now with your weapons deactivated, or I will annihilate the building."

Jenny tugged nervously at her pigtails, and surveyed the Cluster forces surrounding the factory. She exchanged words with her friends, then raised her arm, deploying a small white flag from a hole in her wrist. "Okay, Vexus … just tell your goons to stay calm. I'm coming out."

"Smart girl," smirked the robot queen. "Oh, and on your way out … _do_ bring the LSN droid with you, won't you, Jenny dear? There's a good robot."

* * *

Allison gasped and clutched her hand to her chest, as Vexus repeated her demand that she surrender herself along with Jenny. She glanced out the window, unsure of what to do, when she felt Brad give her a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Allison," he said, "Jenny's a superhero! She does stuff like this all the time. Well … maybe not _exactly_ like this … but she knows what she's doing."

She tried to smile back, but the worry was evident on her face. "Look, Jenny's waving for me to come on out. Oh, _sprockets_ … I hope we can give Drew enough time …"

"Enough time to what?" snapped Tiff, shaking in her ankle boots. "Run away?!? I don't see that fool anywhere. That dang silver booger done up and bugged out on us!" She snuck a glance out the window, peeking out from behind a large steel pipe that ran up to the ceiling …

When suddenly Tiff jumped back with a squeal. A gurgling sound reverberated through the pipe, and it began to vibrate with a eerie _hum_. It sounded like a mudslide was flowing thought it.

* * *

Allison edged out the front door and nervously made her way next to Jenny, feeling extremely vulnerable under the gaze of two hundred roach-drones and a dozen hover-tanks. She slid a robotic hand into Jenny's grasp, hoping to draw some courage from her as they took a few more steps into the open. Jenny gave her new friend a reassuring squeeze, then called out to her evil nemesis. "All right Vexus, I'm the one you want. If you let Allison and my friends go free … then I'll surrender to you peacefully."

Queen Vexus folded her arms, and arched a bemused eyebrow. "You are not exactly in the best of negotiating positions, XJ-9. Why don't you try this counter-offer on for size … you and the LSN droid will once more become one with the Cluster. The humans get to _live_, and spend the rest of their pitiful lives performing back-breaking labor. And if that annoying nano-droid friend of yours shows up … well, I suppose we could put him to work as a trash disposal. Jennifer, do be reasonable … if you care for these fleshy creatures so much, you'll surrender _now_."

Jenny's eyes shifted left and right, taking in the hideous faces of the Cluster drones. "How do I know you won't just kill the humans anyway, after we're assimilated?"

Vexus slapped her face in frustration. "Oh, for the love of … the humans, the humans, it's always the humans with you, isn't it?!? Fine, fine, I give you my word, the precious little humans won't be killed. _Happy_ now?"

"Why should we believe _anything_ you say?" snapped Allison.

To the Vexus' mild surprise, the robot girl – one of her own LSN droids – straightened her shoulders and scowled at her with a look of righteous anger. The eyes which should have been gazing at her queen with adoring reverence now shot daggers of hate instead. "Why should any robot believe a single thing that comes out of your mouth? After all, it's all _lies_, right? You've lied to every robot on Cluster Prime, ever since we came off the assembly line! Every night when we go into sleep mode and back ourselves up, your computers pump more and more _lies_ into our brains! I was always taught that the queen was kind, and noble … and only wanted what was best for us …"

"And you think I don't?" said Vexus, in a tone a mother might use to scold a rebellious child. "You don't believe that I care for each and every robot in the entire Cluster?"

Vexus drew closer to Allison, growing more intimidating with every step she took, looking every bit the personification of the mighty Cluster Empire. "Consider all of the gifts I have given you, foolish LSN-1482. A life of peace and prosperity, in the greatest civilization the galaxy has ever known. Magnificent art and science and culture, the likes of which history has never seen before. You have never known the worry of having a roof over your antenna, or finding your next quart of oil, or wondering if your power cells would suddenly run dry. You were lucky enough to be built in a Robotic Utopia, where you were always among your _own kind_. You have never known what it was like to be mocked and ridiculed by pathetic human mammals. Perhaps you should ask _Jennifer_ what that's like, dear."

The queen's eyes snapped to Jenny now. "And can you honestly say you haven't enjoyed your little stay on Cluster Prime, XJ-9? Didn't you enjoy the beauty of my capital city? Didn't you enjoy _finally_ being surrounded by robots like yourself? Imagine your life, free from the stares and whispers of jealous little meat people, who shun you and insult you simply because their pathetic hamburger-brains cannot understand your greatness. Would you rather go back to Earth and take orders from primates, forcing yourself to fit into their _human_ world? Or would you rather stay here in paradise, never knowing another day of unhappiness for the rest of your life?"

Allison could see from the look in Jenny's eyes that the queen's sales pitch had struck a chord with her. Her pigtails drooped with a pained _whirr_ of her servos, and her CPU raced with thought.

* * *

Watching in the darkened factory window, Sheldon clutched his hands to his mouth and started gnawing on his fingernails. "Omigosh – she's not actually thinking about joining the Cluster, is she? Jenny would never desert us like that! _Gulp._ She wouldn't, right guys?"

Chloe was hovering beside him, straining to hear the conversation with a group of other slaves. "I wouldn't be surprised if she _did_," she said, with a guilty look on her face. "I never thought about what it must be like for her to be all alone at school like that …"

"Well, she had better _not_," huffed Brit, stomping away from the window. "I am certainly not going to spend another _minute_ working as a grease monkey for a bunch of … _Aiiieeeeee!_"

The students turned to see what Brit was screaming at. She was pointing at one of the huge machine presses that made parts for the assembly lines. It was an immense machine, twenty feet wide and twelve feet high, cast from solid steel six inches thick. It must have weighed fifteen tons – and it was _melting_ into the floor like a snowball in a frying pan. _Dozens_ of huge machine presses were gurgling and bubbling, rippling with wavy patterns and sloughing together into one enormous puddle of thick, gooey fudge. Thick, gooey, _silver-green_ fudge.

* * *

Vexus grinned evilly, enjoying the puzzled looks on the two robot girls in front of her … with a little more persuading, perhaps she wouldn't even have to _force_ them to stay …

Then Jenny's eyes steeled themselves with newfound clarity, and a frown spread on her face. "Cluster Prime isn't a _paradise_, Vexus. It's not a paradise for all of the _human slaves_ that are trapped here. And it's a just a big _fake_ paradise for all the robots! Of course they're happy every day of their lives. You _program_ them to be! Your stupid backup computers make them happy, and make sure that everyone does whatever you want them to do! What kind of paradise is it when you're not even allowed to think for yourself? Why are you afraid of letting the robots think for themselves, huh?"

"Oh, free will is _highly_ overrated," huffed Vexus, "just look at what it's done for your disgusting little _human_ friends. Free will leads to _chaos_. The Cluster is all about _unity_, and in that unity we achieve peace and harmony and strength. _Pfft_, 'not allowed to think for yourself' … _please_, stop being so melodramatic. Did LSN-1482 seem like a zombie when you first met her? Did any of her other friends? I have no interest in ruling over an empire of zombies. My robot subjects lead normal, happy, fulfilling lives. I simply use the backup system to _guide_ them with the big decisions – and _correct_ them, when necessary. I tell them what they need to _do_. I tell them what they need to _remember_. And I make sure that every robot in the Cluster works together as a team … doing their part for the _common good_."

Jenny's eyes narrowed into angry, white slivers. "And just _who_ decides what the 'common good' is?"

"Well, somebody has to," the queen snickered. "And there's no robot more qualified than _me_."

"And I suppose the 'common good' involves building you a giant pyramid for a palace," growled Allison, growing more bold by the second. "And sending out huge fleets of starships to conquer the galaxy for your glory. And forcing us to obey you, and love you, and be loyal to you – and destroying the lives of any robot who dares to question you! You're not a queen, you're a _dictator_!"

A nasty snarl grew on Vexus' face, and her eyes blazed like smoldering embers. "This conversation is starting to get a _boring_," she sneered. Her antennae began to crackle with plasma energy, and the orb over her head glowed a menacing orange. She levitated into the air, glowering down at the girls as if they were insignificant worms. "I am _Vexus_. I _am_ the Cluster! I, and I alone, decide what is best for robotkind! I do not need to waste my time convincing a pair of young clockwork whelps of such an obvious fact! Vexus does not explain herself! Vexus _commands!_"

* * *

"Whoa, that crazy robot bug-woman is, like, _seriously_ spazzing out," shouted Tamika, as she watched Vexus through the window. Then the robot queen gave another hand signal to her hover-tanks. The maws of their giant cannons sizzled with lethal intensity. The roach-drones deployed extra laser-tipped arms from their bodies, and started advancing on Jenny, Allison, and the factory itself. "Omigawd, like, they're coming for us! This is so _totally whack_! We're _so_ gonna get collared and …"

Then she realized that absolutely _nobody_ was listening to her. She turned to see what everyone was looking at – "Like … Oh. My. _Gawd_."

Waterfalls of shiny molasses ran down the walls, coating everything in the factory with a shimmering, gooey film of silver-green. Waves of sludge flowed along the giant pipes, bringing them to life as they began to flex and twist like giant silver pythons. The assembly line equipment, the welding stations, the giant bins of scrap metal and raw materials … everything inside the factory was coalescing into a ocean of metallic pudding, pulsing and groaning and rippling with frantic silver-green circuit patterns. It crept up the support girders and coated the ceiling. It flowed under the students' feet and covered the floor. They heard it run through the air vents and ooze behind the walls. The silver sludge was devouring every single ounce of metal and plastic inside the slave factory … including the factory _itself_.

Then the floor began to vibrate. The students froze up in a state of shock; the slaves clutched their rifles, unsure of what was happening. But Brad busted out into a huge, ear-to-ear grin. "This is gonna be – _so_ – _majorly_ – cool," he shouted. "Everybody grab something and hold on tight!"

* * *

Jenny's arm-extensions shot out and decked a roach-drone with solid right cross. Then she pulled his head off and used it to shield herself from a volley of Vexus' assimilation darts. She threw the drone-head at the robot queen like a frisbee, missing her face by a matter of inches. Vexus balled her fists in seething rage, her oil pressure approaching dangerously high levels. "I expect this kind of behavior from you, Jennifer …" – then she turned towards Allison – "… but to have one of my own LSN droids join you in rebelling against me … is _unacceptable!_ No robot has _ever_ left the Cluster, LSN-1482. And you are certainly not going to be the _first!_"

"Well, maybe I _want_ to be the first," Allison shouted angrily. "And maybe after the _rest_ of the robots find out the truth about you, a lot of them will want to leave the Cluster, too! Why won't you let us think for ourselves, 'Your Majesty'? Are you that _afraid_ of us?"

The queen's voice was like a blast of icy wind. "I am the supreme leader of an interstellar empire. I rule over hundreds of worlds, with trillions of robots at my command! I have the most powerful fleet and the greatest army in the universe at my disposal! _Nothing_ frightens me. _Nothing …_"

Suddenly a deep, undulating rumble rolled through the ground.

Everything and everyone began to shake in place, as if a powerful quake were striking the city. A growl like distant thunder seemed to emanate from the direction of … the factory.

The factory didn't look right somehow. Something funny was going on … Vexus could sense it, and she wasn't going to waste any more time bantering with the girls. She shouted out a command to fire, and one dozen hover-tank commanders pushed their red buttons simultaneously, unleashing twelve blasts of orange plasma upon the building. Twelve spectacular explosions rang out, sending billowing clouds of smoke and debris flying into the air. Jenny and Allison hit the dirt, shielding themselves as jagged wreckage sailed over their heads. Then they flipped over, terrified of what they would find …

The factory was _still standing_. Instead of twelve giant holes blasted out of the walls, there were twelve smoldering craters, shimmering and pulsing with busy patterns of silver-green … and they were _healing_ themselves. Silvery goo began to spread across the outside walls of the twenty-story building. Veins of pulsing green energy zigzagged across the surface, until all of Slave Factory Forty-Six looked like it had been dipped in green and silver paint. The very walls of the factory seemed to wiggle, as if they were made of silver gelatin. Then they started to vibrate with nervous, quivering spasms …

Four colossal fountains of silver-green sludge erupted from the corners of the factory building, four geysers of gooey paste that gushed outwards like water from a broken dam. Everyone stared at the impossible sight in total astonishment as the sludge-rivers arced out majestically … then the drones shrieked in horror as they realized that the sludge was rushing down at them with terrific speed. The giant sludge-fountains slammed into the ground like falling mountains, crushing hover-tanks and roach-drones beneath their incalculable tonnage.

Vexus' eyes shot wide with incredulity. Those giant silver-green pillars of sludge … were giant _legs_. And the factory was lifting itself _off the ground_ with them.

Rubble and concrete shot in a thousand directions as the hulking mass amazingly raised itself into the air. The ground shook viciously, knocking roach-drones flat on their insectoid faces; Jenny grabbed Allison and flew both of them up in a climbing circle, so they could watch the unbelievable spectacle in front of them. The four titanic pillars of sludge gurgled and expanded, growing themselves higher to raise the building thirty, fifty, one hundred feet upwards, propping it up like a set of mammoth stilts. The building shuddered and groaned and altered its shape, as if an invisible sculptor was molding a million tons of silver clay. Then with an earth-rattling heave, the living-factory pushed up with its two front sludge-pillars, like a dinosaur standing up on its hind legs. Rivers of silver-green goo flowed and roared all around the factory, smoothing and shaping until it completed a mind-boggling transformation into a towering _humanoid_ form. Two monstrous feet grew out of the giant figure's legs. Fingers the size of city buses grew out of its arms. A dome of sludge formed at the very top of the figure, stretching and oozing and growing a pointed chin and a mop of silver-green hair … and two huge, familiar dumbfounded eyes.

"_Ooohhhh,_" echoed a deep, resonating voice, "_I can't believe I ate the whole thing._"

The roach-drones gaped skyward in terror, and scrambled like panicked ants, with eyes the size of soccer balls. Slave Factory Forty-Six, the _entire_ twenty-story industrial building, was gone. In its place was a rectangular hole carved out of the ground … and a giant, shimmering silver-green android. _Three hundred and seventy-five feet tall._

Stray droplets of silver nano-goo sprinkled to the ground like rainfall as the giant cautiously flexed his elbows, trying to adjust to his stunning metamorphosis. His huge face slowly turned towards Jenny and Allison, and his mouth curled into a smile that could have swallowed a semi truck. "_I figured it was time for me to start pulling my own weight_," his window-rattling voice boomed out.

Vexus craned her neck upwards to stare at a sight that was amazing even by her standards. Finally, she snapped out of her gaze, and ground her metallic teeth together. "That nano-droid is proving to be more _trouble_ than I gave him credit for," she growled. "All drone troops, _fire at will!_"

The roach-drones focused their antennae-lasers on Drew's colossal feet and legs, but their combined firepower barely made a scratch in them. The seven remaining hover-tanks maneuvered madly, backing away to gain room to fire. But then one of the impossibly huge legs picked itself off the street, rising into the sky as if in slow motion. The air filled with metallic _groans_ as Drew's gigantic body began to flex and move. Then with a whistle of wind, the leg came crashing back to the pavement with a thundering jolt, pulverizing two mighty hover-tanks under its foot as if they were made of shaving cream. The force of Drew's footstep sent a rolling wave of concrete along the ground, and punched a crater into the road the size of a baseball diamond.

Smytus and Vexus stared, transfixed, as the other leg pushed off the ground, spraying fountains of loose dust and debris high into the air. The giant android was starting to _walk_. Then a shadow fell over the queen and the commander, and a giant foot came hurtling out of the sky directly towards _them_. Vexus and Smytus scrambled for their very lives, their servos screaming as they ran at breakneck speed, barely jumping clear as the mountain of nano-sludge slammed into the pavement behind them. They flew through the air like rag dolls, landing on the sidewalk thirty yards away with an undignified _clang_.

The two elite Cluster robots struggled to their feet, as the ground pitched and heaved like a rowboat in a raging ocean. By the time they collected their senses, the giant android had taken another step – leaving another giant footprint, with nothing but compressed gravel where the hover-limo and the command post used to be. As the giant continued walking towards the city, Smytus rushed to the edge of the footprint-crater and looked in. "My command post," he howled, slapping a clawed hand to his forehead. "Oh, for the love of … first the bank calls and says my account's overdrawn, and now _this!_"

But Queen Vexus spun him around, and snarled into his face with near-insane fury burning in her eyes. "Call for reinforcements," she shouted. "Bring in air units. Put the entire army on alert. I want the nano-droid destroyed. I want XJ-9 _destroyed_. I want every single one of those miserable Earthlings _destroyed!_ And Commander …" – bolts of sizzling electricity arced between her antennae – "… I want that treacherous LSN droid brought _back_ to me. She's a _traitor_. And traitors must be _dealt_ with."

* * *

A doorway formed in the middle of Drew's colossal chest, oozing open to let Jenny fly inside with Allison – to a room bursting with thousands of excited faces. The high school students and the ex-slaves were gazing through window-slots in the silver-green walls, watching in amazement as the rooftops rushed by below. Brad and the others clutched onto a maze of crisscrossing handrails, bracing against the rocking motion of Drew's giant strides. He saw the girls fly in, and waved madly to get their attention.

"Jenny! Jenny, how awesome is this! This _totally_ makes getting kidnapped by evil alien robots all worth it! _Wooooo hooooo!_"

"Speak for _yourself_," she _harrumphed_. "Still, it was _way cool_ to see Vexus freak out like that!"

Allison laughed and clutched onto a silver-green support column. "Wow, and Drew said that _I_ was the one who wasn't afraid to think big! This is _unbelievable_!"

"_Glad you're all enjoying the ride,_" boomed Drew's thundering voice, echoing down from the ceiling. "_But could somebody in there PLEASE tell me if I'm going in the right direction?!?_"

Allison grinned upwards. "Drew, hang on! I'll get to the window and shout out directions!"

"Check it out check it out check it out!" shouted Brad, as they lunged forward from another giant step. Looking straight down, he could see Drew's immense feet crashing into the pavement like monstrous pile drivers – knocking hover-trucks and cargo carriers into neighboring buildings as if they were Tonka toys. Another hover-tank raced around a corner, pointed its gun straight up, and fired – a split second before a silver-green mountain mashed it flat as a pancake.

Brad balled his fists excitedly and bounced up and down as if he was five years old. "Do something else, Drew! Pull some high tension wires down! Stare into a subway train and scare the robots inside! Pick up a bus and throw it! Smash through a building! YEAH!"

"Brad, this _isn't_ one of your late night monster movies," snapped Jenny, "we're trying to save our _lives_, remember? We've got to get out of the city and break into Base Zero-One before …"

Suddenly a deafening noise roared through Drew's cavernous interior. Everyone lurched violently off their feet, and for a harrowing instant it felt like Drew might tip over – then the floor leveled out, like a ocean liner righting itself after a tidal wave. Brad pulled himself to his feet and shouted grumpily towards the ceiling. "Hey, watch where you're walking, Drew! Try growing some shock absorbers!"

"_Excuse me,_" rumbled Drew's voice, "_but someone just shot me in the back with an air-to-air missile. SO SORRY to inconvenience you. Aw, crud … here comes another one."_

Drew shook from another huge explosion. "Doesn't that hurt?" yelled Allison, concerned.

"_Well it sure doesn't tickle,_" he answered. "_UNGHH. I could use a little help out here, Jenny._"

"I'm on my way," shouted the teen heroine. "Just worry about getting through town as fast as possible. As soon as the Cluster figures out we're headed for the military base, every spaceship on the planet is going to come for us!" With a blast of exhaust she rocketed back outside, and the door in Drew's ten-foot thick chest closed up behind her with a gurgling _schwerrrp_.

* * *

The robotic driver of the delivery van drummed his pudgy steel fingers against the dashboard, impatiently waiting for the traffic light to turn green. Finally the light changed colors … but traffic didn't budge an inch. The robot extended his neck-stalk out the window and screamed some choice words at the idiots in front of him … then he noticed that all of the vehicles on the street were speeding in the other direction. And the cargo trucks in front of him were making reckless U-turns. And the hovercars flying overhead were twisting wildly across each other's fight path, frantically attempting to reverse their course. Then he noticed the ominous sound, like peals of thunder rolling through the city …

KATHOOOOM KATHOOOOM KATHOOOOM KATHOOOOM

The robot's turbopump nearly jumped out of his metal chest, as his head pivoted up to see a forty-story monster android lumbering around the corner in front of him. The silver-green behemoth propped an impossibly huge hand against the skyscraper next to him, crushing out a hole ten stories high. A massive silver-green foot swung forward and punched a crater into the now-empty traffic lanes, sending a shower of concrete boulders raining down around the delivery van. "_Everybody get outta the way_," the android's voice bellowed down the avenue. "_Giant robot coming through!_" That was all the driver needed to hear. He deserted his van and sprinted down the road, joining a panicked crowd of citizens fleeing for their robotic lives, screaming at the top of their voice boxes.

Drew was trying his best to avoid hurting civilians, but the Cluster military didn't seem to care. High-speed engines roared overhead, as a quartet of wasp fighters streaked past Drew's face, pelting him with blasts of plasma fire. Chunks of silver-green debris blasted out of his back and tumbled to the street below, but just as quickly, the wounds sealed themselves back with thousands of gallons of fresh nano-sludge. The wasp fighters looped up and reversed course, coming back at the monster android on an attack vector, with missiles deployed beneath their short jagged wings. The lead fighters unleashed their weapons …

And disappeared into a airborne inferno as Jenny blasted through their hulls, shredding the fighters to pieces with her pigtail-drills. Rapid-fire beams from her laser-limbs sliced through the last two fighters, and they tumbled out of control, crashing into skyscrapers on either side of the street. But the fighters had successfully unleashed a volley of missiles at Drew's enormous body, and they twisted through the sky towards the middle of his giant chest … but hit his arm instead, as Drew managed to grow an eighty-foot-wide shield from the nanobots on his forearm. The massive explosion forced him off balance, and he stumbled to his left, plowing into the plate-glass windows of a sixty-story office tower. Steel and glass and silver-green chunks of carbon-plating fell to the ground in an avalanche of debris, crushing abandoned hovercars and demolishing a monorail track.

Drew flinched from another barrage of plasma fire, and turned to see even more fighter wasps streaking at him from behind. _All right, that's enough of this crap._ His colossal eyes made a quick scan of the surrounding buildings, and he saw a monster crane erected on top of an office tower, hoisting a giant holographic billboard to the roof. His massive arm swung up and clamped around the base of the crane, and snapped it off its thick support columns as if he were plucking a daisy. Drew yanked the giant holo-billboard free from the steel cables, watching the fighter wasps continue their diving attack at him – then he swung the hundred-foot-wide billboard through the air like a flyswatter, slamming a pair of attack fighters into the thirty-fifth floor of the ClusterBank tower.

Jenny swooped around Drew's enormous face and unleashed a pair of heat-seeking missiles, which snaked after the two remaining fighters and blasted them out of existence. "Drew, hurry up!" she shouted. "Keep on walking! There's a lot more tanks and fighters on the way!"

"_I know, I know!_" he groaned. "_But I think it might be a good idea to grab some dessert._"

With another horrific _crash_ of his giant foot, Drew stomped on a huge pile of smoking debris in the street below, and his gargantuan foot began to warble with patterns of silver-green. Curtains of nano-goo poured out of its sides, enveloping the debris in a shimmering blanket of ooze … and converting it into a fresh batch of nanobots. Drew absorbed the debris, and the rest of the demolished crane, adding hundreds of tons to his overall mass. A fresh river of nano-sludge rushed over his body – and he started to _grow_.

Now the city street was a full-fledged battleground, as dozens of hover-tanks whined into firing positions, and new wasp fighters shrieked between the skyscrapers to let loose a blizzard of firepower at the silver-green Goliath. Drew ducked his head under a fifty-story-high skybridge and pressed onward as the tanks hurled blistering plasma bolts into his chest, and the fighters lobbed missiles and gunfire into his back. Cluster drones stationed on the rooftops pelted him with laser rifles and shoulder rockets. The morning air was filled with an unending scream of laser fire and the staccato rumble of nonstop explosions. Jenny buzzed around her towering friend and deployed a pair of buzz saws from her forearms, then dove right through a pair of hover-tanks, sawing them cleanly in half. The tanker-bots didn't even get out of their seats before death came from above in the form of a silver foot, blasting into the pavement like a moon falling out of orbit … and spreading its shiny sludge to absorb fresh material into its body.

Cluster fighters streaking downward to dive-bomb the giant were plucked from mid-air by Drew's monstrous hand, and absorbed into his body with a squeeze of his fist. He snatched satellite dishes and roof antennas from each passing building, and stepped on every abandoned vehicle he could see in front of him. He rammed his fingers into the skyscrapers on either side of him and gouged huge scars out of their surfaces, as if he were scooping up handfuls of snow, ripping out thousands of tons of glass and steel and copper in the process. His arms reverberated with an electric gurgle as the material was broken down and re-assembled into trillions of trillions of fresh nanobots. He was taking in more than enough new mass to replace what the Cluster army was blasting away.

Jenny popped high into the air to fire a barrage of lasers at an attacking wasp fighter, then she did a quick scan, and swooped down excitedly, stopping to hover only a few yards in front of a silver-green nose five stories tall. "Drew, you're almost out of the city! We just have to get past a few more towers and …"

"_Yeah, I can see it!_" bellowed his rumbling voice. "_I can see it on the horizon!_"

Towering six hundred and fifty feet above the panicking city below, Drew placed his massive hands against the skyscrapers and pushed them aside, like a jungle explorer emerging from overgrown ferns. His wide shoulders ripped into the buildings and sent a spray of glass through the air, scraping huge scars into the towers' sixtieth floors. The eight-lane avenue was becoming to be a tight fit, and it was a relief to finally get out of the capital's downtown area. From his vantage point, Drew could easily see the bustling activity of the commercial spaceport off to the south, and an aggregation of harsh battleship-gray bunkers and fortifications off to the west. Base Zero-One, the largest military base in the entire Cluster Empire.

He heaved his titanic shoulders, and exchanged an anxious look with his tiny pale-blue robotic friend. "_Let's do it, Jenny_," he said nervously.

Explosions and screams and sirens echoed through the city behind him, as Drew pushed his way out of the skyscrapers and smashed his colossal feet through warehouses and factories in the city's western industrial sector. The entire planet seemed to heave upwards with every thundering footstep he took. With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he waded through the steel and concrete buildings of the outlying suburbs. He flattened the northern wall of the new sports stadium. He obliterated the art museum, and sent terrified robots running for their lives as he bulldozed through the new roller coaster at the amusement park. And every ounce of debris and destruction under his feet was wrapped up in a gurgling coat of silver-green goo, and absorbed into his ever-growing body.

He walked westward towards the military base as fast as he could. He wasn't running – he couldn't run, it took all of the computer power in his body just to hold himself together – yet with each stride spanning the length of two football fields, he was actually traveling at a fantastic speed. And the faster he could get them all to the starships at Base Zero-One, the less time the base would have to react. Already, squadrons of fighters and bombers leapt into the sky ahead of him. Companies of hover-tanks and plasma artillery were preparing for his arrival. Drew and Jenny were three minutes away from a battle that would either see them head back to Earth as heroes, or die on Cluster as flaming scrap metal.

* * *

Continued in Chapter Seventeen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	17. For The Common Good

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Seventeen – For The Common Good

* * *

Massive cannons on the base's perimeter erupted with white-hot plasma, spraying the blood-red skies of Cluster Prime with blazing rivers of death. Railguns lobbed shells at air-shredding speeds, forming a protective curtain of projectiles. Jenny zigzagged madly through the fountains of gunfire, pushing herself to the very limits of her flying abilities. Pale-blue beams shot out from her laser-limbs, sending a pair of defense towers skyward in roiling fire-clouds. But she knew her weapons were pitifully insufficient; she was sorely outmatched by the firepower amassed at Base Zero-One, and she knew that she didn't stand a chance against it. Fortunately … they weren't actually _aiming_ at her.

The Cluster munitions screamed upwards to slam into the surface of an impossible monster, a silver-green android that towered a mind-boggling _five thousand feet_ into the sky. Drew had absorbed _billions_ of tons of wreckage in his path, converting it all into fresh nanobots and carbon mesh. Each of his legs rose higher than a skyscraper, and each step he took wiped out ten city blocks. With another half-mile stride, his mountain-foot slammed down on the vast concrete tarmac, obliterating five star cruisers with a ground-cracking impact and a gust of hurricane-force wind. Countless streams of gunfire ripped into his body, carving out flaming gouges that showered the base with hailstones of silver-green debris.

Jenny curled around her friend's immense back, trying to protect him from aerial assault. Sixty Cluster ships swarmed menacingly overhead, diving down towards the mile-high intruder to launch withering laser and missile attacks. Jenny shot a salvo of guided missiles at a formation of six light cruisers, blotting five of them out of the sky; but the sixth one got a shot off with a particle beam that punched a fifty-foot hole clean through Drew's shoulder. He winced from the blow, then swung his good arm around as his attacker sailed past, swatting the cruiser from the sky with a glance of his hand. A burning fireball tore into the base of a mile-high sensor tower, which toppled over and destroyed eight more starship hangars.

And to the north of those burning hangars was their objective – the Shipyards. Twenty ladybug-shaped spacecraft carriers, each half a mile long, sat on a gigantic expanse of tarmac, surrounded by tall cranes and construction scaffolding. Drew rocked from the impact of sixteen cruise missiles on his left leg; he felt a crack form along his knee, and raced to repair it with a hundred thousand gallons of fresh nanobots. Another pair of colossal strides brought him to fifty yards from the nearest carrier. As Jenny chased away Cluster fighters, and beam-weapons burned clouds of silver flakes out of his titanic body, Drew slowly bent his knees and stretched his hands underneath the giant starship, spreading his fingers out like the tines of a forklift. Then with a Herculean effort, he lifted the carrier off the ground, raising it up to chest level.

* * *

Even through a hundred-foot-thick slab of nanobot material, the noise inside of Drew's chest was almost deafening. So many weapons were slamming into his body that individual explosions were indiscernible; a constant thunder reverberated through the walls, and a steady stream of silver-green dust rained down on their heads. Even so, escape now seemed tantalizingly close; certain death was just outside, and yet a flicker of foolish hope seemed to take hold in the humans for the first time. For the first time, the slaves started to believe they were getting out of here.

With a gurgling roar, the nano-sludge on the front wall began to swirl with activity. A silver whirlpool formed in the wall, growing deeper and deeper until it turned into a wide tunnel. The Space Marines checked their weapons and moved to the mouth of the tunnel; the Cluster drones on board the carrier would have to be dealt with. Three thousand humans watched the boarding tunnel grow, and got ready to run in behind the Marines. Another round of high-explosives pounded Drew's back, sending visible shock waves rippling through his body. That tunnel couldn't grow fast enough.

Allison gazed at the quivering silver-green walls with a touch more concern than the humans around her; she was just as worried about escaping, but she was anxious about Drew's safety, too. She couldn't believe that he could take this punishment much longer …

Suddenly a burly human, the Space Marine who called himself Colonel Crawford, grabbed her by the arm and started to drag her towards the tunnel. "They tell me you're going to get us past the Ring Guns. Is that true, little lady?"

Cluster Prime's artificial ring had forty-eight giant plasma cannons mounted around its rim; without proper clearance, they would automatically fire on any ship that tried to fly past them. "Th-that's right," stammered Allison, feeling a bit intimidated by the colonel. "I'm an LSN droid ... I can log on to the ClusterNet and transmit a set of clearance codes."

"All right then, you're coming in first, with us," he ordered. His eyes burned into her with an intensity not matched by most robots she'd ever known. "We need you to get the ship's main dish up and working as fast as possible. Don't worry, _robot_, we'll protect you. 'Cause if you don't get those ring guns shut down, we're all gonna fry like Momma's Sunday chicken."

Allison crouched behind the colonel, shaking with nervousness – and racked with guilt, as her thoughts drifted again to the humans' ordeal on Cluster Prime. It had been nothing but torture for all of them, from the very moment they'd arrived. Something in the look on their faces convinced her that they would rather die than return to a life of slavery. She had never thought about things like that before, but now that she knew the truth, the evil of her beloved home chilled her to her very circuits.

The tunnel kept growing out of Drew's colossal chest, a thirty-foot-wide corridor that stretched out like a giant soda straw and pressed up against the side of the spacecraft carrier. It docked with a large access hatch on the command deck, and a silver-green tentacle plunged into the electronic lock – and seconds later, the hatch swung open with a hiss of compressed air. The Space Marines barreled through the tunnel with a fearsome yell and a blaze of rifle fire, and charged inside the Cluster starship.

* * *

Three medium star-cruisers strafed the mile-high android with their laser cannons, sending up geysers of silver-green ooze along the length of the right arm. The Cluster ships made a 180-degree turn, and began another attack – then suddenly the lead ship started to shake, like a rag doll in a dog's mouth. Jenny had swooped up underneath the cruiser, and rammed her hands into its metallic belly. With a superhuman burst of strength, she flipped the star-cruiser end-over-end into the two ships that were flying behind it. A huge fireball blossomed into the sky, but more ships hurtled in from the southwest to replace the losses; their numbers seemed to be endless, and even more were on the way from neighboring bases.

Drew was completely vulnerable to attack, straining to remain stationary as he held the spacecraft carrier steady in his forklift-hands. Jenny could see his body frothing and churning to repair itself, sealing up cracks and repairing craters with millions of gallons of nanobot sludge. She unleashed another barrage of rockets into a squadron of heavy fighters, smiling with satisfaction as they dove into a row of fuel tanks like flaming daggers. Then she then pulled into a steep climb, up to Drew's eye level, picking off stray fighters along the way. "How much longer till everyone's on board?" she shouted.

Artillery shells tore into Drew's upper leg, blasting out chunks of silver-green rubble. "_I think the last ones are in the tunnel,_" boomed his world-shaking voice. "_Jenny … I can't keep this up much longer –_"

A single proton missile streaked out of the sky, and slammed into the middle of Drew's enormous back. A miniature sun flashed into existence, bathing the base in a blinding light and sending a shock wave ripping through the air. The horrific explosion sent a dozen fighters corkscrewing into the ground, and reduced nearby buildings into cinder skeletons. Jenny was shielded from the worst of the blast by Drew's body – but the shock wave flung her through the air like a forgotten newspaper, and she bounced off the spacecraft carrier with a sprawling _clang_. She lay against the hull with smoke drifting from her tips of her pigtails, scorched and battered, trying to unscramble her sensors as she ran a quick self-diagnostic …

Then she felt the carrier shaking underneath her back, and saw something horrible start to happen to her giant friend. The proton missile attack had proven to be too much for even Drew's gargantuan body to withstand. With the roar of ten thousand waterfalls, silver-green foam began to churn over his enormous feet. Then they lost solid form, turning into massive, amorphous piles of nano-sludge. The deterioration slowly climbed his shins and raced for his knees. The mile-high android was losing his structural integrity – transforming into a towering, trillion-gallon geyser of thick shiny goo.

* * *

Frantic gunfire lit up the corridors as the Space Marines swarmed over the Cluster roach-drones. The crew had been racing to finish construction in time for the invasion of Earth, and most of the robots onboard were engineers, not warriors. Ex-slaves burst into the engine room and onto the command bridge, igniting vicious battles for control of the ship. The Cluster robots fought back with their trademark mechanical relentlessness; but they were sorely outnumbered by the organic barbarians. Hundreds more laser-armed slaves poured into the carrier, leaving a trail of scorched robotic husks behind them.

Colonel Crawford led the attack on the bridge, destroying five roach-drones as he raced forward like a blitzing linebacker. Allison was running in a low crouch behind him, fighting to keep her composure as laser blasts rang out all around her. She squealed in surprise as the colonel threw his body on top of her, knocking her to the deck just as a stray laser beam baked the air above her antenna. He quickly rolled to his knees, and eased off a pair of perfectly-aimed shots that dropped the final roach-drone like a falling anvil. "Told you we'd protect you," he grinned through his jagged teeth.

Allison gulped nervously and whispered thanks, then climbed to her feet and examined the vast control consoles before her. She didn't know the first thing about reactors or hyperdrive, but she _did_ know her computer systems. _Come on, 1482, don't mess up now._ As the battle was pushed further away from bridge, Allison finally found what she was looking for. She powered up the dormant communications board, and the fingers of her left hand plugged themselves into a data socket …

Sweaty and exhilarated, Brad surprised her from behind as he rushed onto the bridge with the rest of the students from Tremorton High. "Oh yeah, we boosted one of Vexus' big bad warships! _Woo hoo!_ I call shotgun! Come on, Allison, this thing's gotta have, like, a zillion horsepower under the hood. Let's open 'er up and pop some wheelies in hyperspace …"

She briefly pondered whether to quiz Brad on the calling of "shotgun" or the definition of "wheelie" … but quickly forgot about it as the floor seemed to drop out from beneath their feet, sending everyone reeling against the railings and panels. The carrier was falling towards to the ground. The engines still weren't powered up, but somebody managed to activate the giant viewscreens that hung from the ceiling, and they got their first good look outside …

"Holy _fudgesicles_," gasped Brad, in slack-jawed wonder. Allison didn't know what a fudgesicle was, so she assumed it had something to do with the end of the world.

* * *

Jenny had deployed her booster wings, her leg-rockets, and the absurdly giant engine stored in the middle of her back; but even at a hundred and ten percent of her maximum rated thrust, there was no way she could support the enormous mass of the spacecraft carrier. As she strained to keep the ship aloft, she gaped in astonishment at the scene of destruction unfolding beneath her. Her android friend was collapsing like a summertime icicle … and he was wiping out Base Zero-One as he did.

Drew's towering body was reverting into a liquid state, rushing towards the ground and spreading outwards in a monster lava flow. Roach-drones stared upwards in terrified stupor as a thousand-foot silver-green tidal wave swept over the Shipyards. Starships literally _melted_ under the onslaught of ravenous nanobots, and broke into giant chunks of flotsam hurtling along in the silver floodwaters. Churning rivers of silver molasses spread over the hangars, and the barracks, and the armories, filling the air with a sickening gurgle, and the screech of dissolving metal. The great tower of nano-sludge grew shorter, and lost any semblance of humanoid form. Drew's head was the last part of him to liquefy, flashing into a torrent of free-flowing sludge with a deafening grunt of agony.

"Hold on!" Jenny screamed at him, as she struggled to squeeze a few more tons of thrust from her engines. If the carrier dropped into the frothing, all-devouring silver-green lake, then it was _game over_. "Pull yourself together, just for a few more seconds!" The carrier's belly dropped dangerously close to the splashing waves. Her rocket exhaust was kicking up a spray of nano-goo …

But then Jenny heard a magnificent _whine_ reverberate through the hull of the carrier, and seconds later, she felt its mass lighten in her hands. The anti-gravity turbines had started, slowing the carrier's downward motion, and then finally pulling up and away from the shiny, slopping waves of silver pudding …

When a spindly fountain of syrup sprouted up from the silver-green ocean, struggling into the air like a malnourished sunflower, twisting and stretching directly towards Jenny. She balled her fists in hope as the fragile silver tubule strained to get closer to her … then the end of the syrupy cylinder began to morph into something that looked like the hand of a drowning man, grasping for rescue …

Jenny's arm-extensions ratcheted out and grabbed the silver hand, and she pulled on it with all of her robotic might. Then the silver-green cylinder suddenly snapped in half like a strand of taffy. Jenny rolled over backwards in a crazy somersault, and sprawled onto the hull with a blob of thick, metallic dough spread across her belly. The blob continued to shimmer and shift its shape, and it gradually grew a familiar, bewildered, exhausted face that flashed her a thankful smile. As Drew morphed a pair of legs and arms, Jenny helped him towards the hatch on the outside of the carrier's command deck.

* * *

Everyone on the bridge stared in amazement, as the viewscreens displayed the eerie blot of silver-green that was erasing Base Zero-One from the Cluster landscape. A shimmering wave of nano-ooze cascaded over the buildings and flowed around the fusion reactors. It sloughed over the gun batteries and knocked over the sensor towers. Every ship and structure on the military base was sinking into the gooey lake like butter on a hot griddle. Allison began to worry whether anything would stop the insatiable nanobots … but then the lake's surface rippled with staccato flashes of yellow self-destruction, and the nanobots degenerated into trillions of tons of inert, harmless gray ash. But still, that left the largest military base in the Cluster Empire buried in a layer of ash fifty feet thick.

"Whoa," gasped Brad, mesmerized by the surreal destruction on the viewscreen. "Drew just took the biggest _dump_ in the history of the universe!"

A weary voice broke into laughter behind him, and he turned to see Jenny and Drew limping onto the bridge, with smoke wafting from their battle-scarred bodies. "Man, does _that_ ever feel better," Drew chuckled, picking up on Brad's joke. "That's the last time I eat Mexican this early in the day."

"Gross!" sneered Jenny. "Could you two _possibly_ be any more immature?"

Allison watched Brad and the students celebrate Jenny and Drew's successful return, and was overcome with relief that her new friends were safe. And she felt a sense of awe towards them, too – they were willing to sacrifice themselves to save these _humans_, and to save _her_, a Cluster robot, someone they'd only known for a few days. She grimaced at the scorches that covered Jenny from head to toe, and the frantic self-repair activity of Drew's heavily damaged body. _And if I don't come through,_ she thought to herself, _it'll all have been for nothing. I can't let that happen …_

The spacecraft carrier climbed faster as its main engines burst to life, and the crimson Cluster skies swiftly darkened into a star-speckled blackness. The Space Marines barked orders over the giant ship's PA system, racing to warm up the all-important hyperdrive engines. As the capital shrank beneath them, radar indicated that hundreds of ships were speeding in their direction from other bases around the planet. They had only minutes to complete their escape. The impromptu crew brought the nose of the carrier around, and increased speed towards the huge brass-colored planetary ring …

"_Warning, unauthorized ship_," blared a synthesized voice from the communications console. "_You are not cleared for ring transit. Stop your engines, or you will be destroyed._"

Allison's free hand frantically danced over the keyboard on her left arm housing. She put together a phony flight plan to convince the space traffic control computers that they were simply on a routine mission. The forged authorization codes flowed out of her electronic brain, through her fingers, into the carrier's communications array …

The windows glowed with a brilliant crimson light, as if the Cluster sun had exploded. The carrier shuddered and groaned from the thunderous impact of an enormous ball of plasma slamming into the upper hull. The ring guns were firing on them.

Allison mashed a flurry of buttons on her keyboard, and a terrible cold gripped her wiring as her computer screen displayed frustration after frustration. Irritated humans glared at her in disbelief, and she felt herself shrinking under their disapproving gaze. Jenny and Drew raced to her side, eager to offer any help that they could … even if that help was only motivational.

"Allison, what's the problem?" blurted Jenny. "Is there any chance you made a mistake? Maybe they changed the codes?"

"No, I triple-checked all my codes and passwords …" Her shoulders slumped, as a new screen of text came up on the control panel. Allison unplugged her hand from the data socket with a dejected sulk. "Something's wrong with the carrier's main communications dish," she groaned. "I'm not getting a signal through to it. It could be damaged … or maybe it hasn't even been wired up yet."

And just like that, as it seemed that they were moments way from freedom, one stupid malfunction doomed them all to a gruesome death in the void of space. In spite of the heroics of Jenny, Drew, and the thousands of slaves that had stormed the carrier, one unlucky fluke had sucker-punched them, and snuffed out their fragile hope for escape. A doom settled over the bridge like a winter sleet, and a roomful of morbid faces turned upwards to watch the approaching attack ships on the giant viewscreens. Allison pounded her fist on the console, furious at the sheer unfairness of it all. There had to be something she could do for them. There had to be something …

"Wait a minute!" she cried out, thrusting her finger into the air. "I can't get a signal to the main dish. That doesn't mean it's not _working_, it just means I can't get a signal to it! I might be able to send the clearance codes if I access the dish directly!"

"Access it directly?" asked Drew, looking as if he didn't expect to like the answer. "_How?_"

"Go outside and plug myself into it."

Drew stared at her for a half-beat before flinging his arms wildly into the air. "Ally, are you _nuts?!?_ That's crazy! In case you hadn't noticed, there's lasers and stuff flying around out there …"

They tumbled roughly into the control panel, as the giant carrier shuddered from another massive plasma-ball attack. Allison grabbed Drew by the shoulders, staring intently into his wide, expressive eyes. "Yes, I _have_ noticed. And if we don't do something in the next three minutes, those 'lasers and stuff' are going to vaporize us! Drew, Jenny … please, listen to me on this. If I can transmit the codes through the main dish directly, then there's a chance we can _still_ get you and your friends back home to Earth. I think that's a chance worth taking."

She cut off their protests with a raised hand. "Guys … I just found out that someone else has been making my decisions for me, ever since I was assembled. For all I know, this is the first _real_ decision I've ever made in my entire life. _Please_ … let me do this."

Drew and Jenny exchanged an uneasy glance, but it wasn't like they had any better ideas. The three robots raced for the elevator tubes, and pressed the button for the upper decks.

* * *

The circular sections of the airlock door spiraled open with a pneumatic _hiss_, leading out to an infinite expanse of perfectly black sky. Jenny cautiously stepped onto the curved hull with her magnetized feet, followed closely behind by Drew and Allison. Drew had an arm wrapped around Allison's waist; the nanobots in his feet could cling to the hull's smooth surface, but Allison had nothing to prevent her from floating off into space. She wasn't designed with an arsenal of all-purpose gadgets like Jenny; she was designed to interface to the ClusterNet, and it was time for her to put those talents to work.

The main dish rose from the hull in front of them, mounted atop an eighty-foot metal truss. A flicker of optimism glowed in their eyes; the dish appeared to be in perfect condition. The three robot teenagers walked across the carrier's fuselage, taking note of the spectacular ringed planet floating over their heads. "It's pretty awesome out here," Drew quipped over their internal radio link, "except, y'know, for the flaming balls of death aimed at us."

"The ring guns have stopped for now," crackled Jenny's voice, "we shut down the engines, just like they ordered us to. But those Cluster attack ships are going to be on top of us in no time!"

"Wow, you're an endless fountain of happy thoughts, Jenny," he groaned.

"Then we'd better hurry up," said Allison, tugging at Drew's arm to rush him along. Taking the hint, he stretched his body the rest of the way to the metal tower, and they climbed the girders like the rungs of a ladder. Jenny stayed on the hull, and went through one of her dizzying transformations to turn herself into a blue-and-white turret gun. She scanned the inky void with dishes deployed from her pigtails; already, the oncoming swarm of ships was registering on her sensors. She gave her friends a nervous look, mentally urging them to work faster.

Allison reached the back of the dish, and found a set of input sockets that fed into the transmitter. Her fingers plugged into the sockets, and she flipped open the screen on her arm-computer, madly typing commands to maneuver around the maze that was the ClusterNet. Drew had both arms wrapped firmly around her now, as if he were worried that she would float off like a soap bubble if he relaxed his grip. He gulped nervously, and glanced at the vertigo-inducing sprawl of stars that circled lazily overhead. "Hey, Ally, you can't say I never take you anywhere," he said, with a weak chuckle.

She finished transmitting the clearance codes, then turned to the shiny face with the cute green-striped hair that had first given her chills back at the Galleria. His eyes seemed to ache with empathy and concern – _he probably thinks I'm terrified to be out here_, she thought to herself. And she was, a bit, but she was even more terrified of letting everyone down. Because she was finally doing something _really_ important. And she was looking forward to seeing this 'Earth' for herself, and finding out what a life of freedom was like. She reached down to his silver-green arm, and gave him a gentle squeeze. "And I thought the view was amazing from Mile High Tower," she giggled …

When a shrill alarm buzzed from her arm-computer. "Oh, _sprockets_!" she shouted. "The Cluster must have figured out what I'm doing. They're overriding the clearance codes for the guns!" Her fingers resumed their frantic activity on her wrist-keyboard …

Jenny's servos _whirred_ into action, and she swiveled her cannon barrels towards a group of angry, fast-moving lights. "Guys, incoming bogies at eleven o'clock! Allison, forget about it and get down from there! We'll just have to make a run for it and take our chances!"

"No! We'll never get past the ring guns in a ship this size! I can _do_ this!" She redoubled her efforts on her arm-computer, wrestling long-distance with the space traffic control computers …

A salvo of long-range missiles streaked out of nowhere, and plowed into the aft section of the stationary carrier. The hull buckled viciously as if it had been stuck by a giant sledgehammer, and only Drew's steadfast grip kept Allison from being flung off into the cosmos. A group of fast-attack cruisers came into view, and for being the first ships to reach the hijacked carrier, their prize was a screeching blast of high-energy electrons from Jenny's particle cannons. The teen heroine went into full-tilt berserker mode and filled the sky with dozens of brilliant explosions; but for each Cluster ship that Jenny destroyed, three new ones appeared in its place. More fighters vectored in from six directions at once, guaranteeing that at least _some_ of them were going to score hits. Fountains of flame erupted from the carrier's midsection; all it would take is one lucky hit to disable the hyperspace engines …

"_Yes!_ I did it!" Allison shouted triumphantly. "I tricked the traffic computers into thinking that this ship is Queen Vexus' personal space yacht. The ring guns won't fire at us now!"

"Awesome!" grinned Drew. "And the colonel says that his men have the hyperdrive warmed up! They've got a course plotted for Earth, and we're jumping in sixty seconds!"

"Then hurry up and get your butts back inside!" yelled Jenny, as the blasts from her cannons bathed her face in a pale blue light. "I'll keep these Cluster creeps busy while you come down!"

Allison shook her head. "_No!_ I have to keep transmitting until we get away …"

A deep-space wasp fighter swooped around the curvature of the carrier's hull, strafing the armor plating with rapid bursts from its laser guns. Jenny leveled her particle cannons and unleashed a perfect shot that ripped off the fighter's starboard engine …

But now the fighter was cartwheeling through space, and tumbling straight for them at high speed. The fighter's carcass punched into the hull like a burning spear, exploding into a spectacular inferno of flame and smoke and shrapnel. The thick metal plating jumped under their feet like a bucking bronco, and sickening metallic groans sang out from tortured hull for a hundred yards in every direction. The dish-tower suddenly felt as sturdy as a giant pipe cleaner, and shook with insane gyrations …

Then Drew felt a terrible _snap_ vibrate through the tower as its pilings began to fracture. The truss twisted on its axis like a strand of licorice. It was _pulling away_ from the surface of the carrier. His silver-green body shimmered with panic, and he scampered down the tower to coil his arms around the fractured pilings. Laser blasts from attacking cruisers ricocheted all around him, but he was strangely unaware of any danger; as long as Allison was stuck up on the main dish, no force in the universe was going pry him away from that tower.

Jenny dug a set of spike-tipped clamps into the hull, fighting to steady her cannons so she could resume thinning out the ranks of the Cluster Defense Force. Another huge wave of heavy cruisers was approaching from astern, and together, the ships had more than enough firepower to wipe them from existence. She deployed an extra rack of missiles from her back and fired them off; there was no sense in saving them now. _C'mon, Jenny girl, you can do it, only thirty seconds to go …_

With a spine-curdling _screech_, a huge crack appeared in the metal plating, where the crashed wasp fighter had punctured the hull …

The robot teens watched in horror as a section of plating the size of a parking lot simply peeled back like the lid on a sardine can. A hurricane of air screamed out into space; the carrier had no emergency bulkheads, and it began to depressurize at an amazing rate. They could hear screams of panic over their internal radios, coming from the carrier's bridge; then the screams started to fade, replaced by the sounds of choking and gasping. The huge strip peeled away some more, and the gash grew even larger …

Drew's mind froze up like a deer in headlights. Jenny had her hands full desperately fighting off Cluster ships – but someone had to do something about the hull, or else everyone inside was going to suffocate – but the dish-tower felt like it might give way at any second –

He made a horrible decision, sprinted from the tower, and dove for twisted flap of jagged metal, stretching his arms and legs out into long, thin cables. Spikes grew from the ends of the cables and drove into the hull, straining to hold down the huge metal flap against the force of the escaping air. He flowed even _more_ cables out of his back, slinging them over the edges of the torn plating, fighting to pull it down and re-establish an airtight seal. He grimaced with all the strength left in his body, and the air leak shrank into an undetectable whisper …

When another laser-blast slammed into the hull. There was a scream of weakened metal.

And the dish-tower broke completely free, so suddenly that Drew barely had time to turn his head around in time to see – eighty feet of shredded metal pinwheeling away from the carrier – and a flash of violet hair-foil, and a pair of beautiful eyes open wide with terror, spinning off into eternal night –

Jenny and Drew stared into space, paralyzed with shock, at the steel truss shrank into oblivion behind them. Then they felt a vibration flow through the hull, up into their bodies, and seemingly out into the fabric of space itself. The sounds of the hyperdrive engines grew higher and higher in pitch, and a cocoon of insane colors built up around the massive starship, distorting the stars into an angry rainbow. Then everything flashed with a blinding white light – and the pursuing attack ships, the artificial ring, and Cluster Prime itself – simply disappeared.

* * *

Concluded in Chapter Eighteen / Five Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


	18. The Price of Freedom

A/N – And thus Part Two is now complete. I have been totally floored by the response to this story, and I'd like to thank everybody again, especially all of my reviewers. I knew this story was going to be long, but I didn't expect it to hit 90K words … believe me, I'll never write anything this long again. Hopefully, you're not too ticked off at me over the last chapter. Just have a little patience, and Part Three should get under way in a couple of weeks.

Also, if you aren't already, you really need to be reading Deadeye1's fic. The guy can flat-out write, and he's hilarious. Show the brother a little love.

* * *

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eighteen – The Price of Freedom

* * *

It was turning into a complete three-ring circus, even by Tremorton standards. In a town that had grown a bit blasé about extraordinary events – you could only get excited about giant invisible eyeballs and muck monster attacks so many times, after all – it _really_ took something spectacular to bring everything to a screeching halt, especially on a Saturday night. It took something like … the half-mile long Cluster spacecraft carrier that was slowly gliding over downtown.

A global panic had nearly broken out when the carrier had burst out of hyperspace only minutes earlier, catching the world's defenses by surprise. Rapid-reaction teams had scrambled into motion for what seemed sure to be an alien attack … but after a few hasty exchanges over the radio, an amazing tale began to unfold. The ship claimed to be filled with escaping human slaves, and it was requesting emergency landing clearance. Military operations instantly switched over into emergency response mode. Helicopters from the Army and GNN alike joined the hovercars of Skyway Patrol, as they escorted the giant insect-shaped ship to a landing at a municipal park on the edge of the city. They circled watchfully overhead as National Guard units cordoned off an area around the carrier, struggled to maintain safety and order. Wild rumors were already spreading through the city; rumors that the high school students who had been abducted two days ago were among the ones onboard the ship.

Anxious parents had raced across town at breakneck speed to get to the park, but perhaps none of them were as _frustrated_ as Dr. Nora Wakeman. She fought her way through a sea of swinging elbows to reach the police line surrounding the grounded ship, and gave a blistering earful to anyone foolish enough to challenge her right to be on the scene. After all, she was an expert on alien spaceships, she was a world-renown authority on the Cluster, and she had a daughter that was forty-eight hours past her curfew. And as she took umbrage with a 400-pound SWAT officer for his rude behavior and his ignorance of scientific procedure, the hatches on the carrier unlocked with a loud _crack,_ and swung wide open.

To everyone's amazement, hundreds of gaunt, disheveled, but elated humans poured out of the Cluster ship, overcome with joy to _finally_ be back on Earth. They stumbled off the ramps and fell to the ground, kissing the dirt and running their fingers through _real_ green grass. They ran into the happy crowd, shouting with excitement, shaking hands and swapping kisses with complete strangers. Some of them exchanged grinning salutes with generals and admirals in the welcoming party. Some of them limped to waiting ambulances and paramedics.

Then the high school students came out, and Mrs. Wakeman was nearly trampled into the earth by a stampede of parents rushing to embrace their sons and daughters. She got to her feet and brushed a few clods of soil from her yellow lab coat – grumbling to herself about the unwashed masses and their lack of respect for members of the scientific community – when she saw XJ-9 dragging her feet down the ramp, seemingly not in any hurry to leave the giant ship.

"XJ-9! XJ-9! _Finally!_" The doctor ran towards her robotic daughter with a exasperated gasp, and gave her a quick once-over. "Are you undamaged? Is your neural network intact? And just where in the name of Sir Isaac Blessed Newton have you _been_ for the past two days?

"Mom! Oh, Mom … are you ever a sight for sore circuits!" Jenny dropped to her knees, and flung her arms around her mother's neck with a crushing grip – nothing wrong with her hydraulics, Mrs. Wakeman moaned to herself as she felt her vertebrae cracking – then sat on her heels, with an incredibly weary expression on her face. "Mom, we were kidnapped and taken to Cluster Prime and …"

"_Cluster Prime!_" the doctor shouted excitedly. "So the stories were accurate! Oh, how extraordinary! Our knowledge of the Cluster homeworld is so woefully incomplete! XJ-9, do you know what this means? You are the very first robot to go to Cluster Prime and safely return! XJ-9, we must get you back to the lab at once for a thorough diagnostic and a complete debriefing. I want to hear every …"

Then Mrs. Wakeman paused, and noticed something strange about her daughter for the first time. She seemed distracted, as if her mind was a million miles away … and her eyes were filled with an unbelievable sadness. It was always a difficult task to decipher a teenager's intricate web of moods, and more difficult still to calculate the proper response to them. But when the three thousand _other_ escapees from the ship were dancing around like it was Mardi Gras, it was a statistically safe assumption that XJ-9 _should_ have been happy as well. "XJ-9, what _is_ the matter? Are you sure you're alright? _Eh_ … do you need a fresh oil filter, dear?"

"No, I'm _fine_, Mom," she moped, sounding completely unconvincing. "I'm just _fine_."

"XJ-9, I don't understand," said a baffled Mrs. Wakeman, straightening her glasses. "You've just become the very first robot ever to escape the Cluster; you've saved your little classmates and three thousand humans from a lifetime of slavery, and brought them back to their homes and families. You've stolen an entire starship filled with the very latest in Cluster technology; the potential for scientific and research breakthroughs boggles the _mind_! You foiled another one of Vexus' evil plans to assimilate you and conquer the Earth … XJ-9, you should be _ecstatic_! I appreciate that this must have been a trying ordeal for you … but everything is all right now!"

Jenny's eyes dropped into her chest, and her pigtails sunk to her shoulders, with a soft _whine_ like a lonely gate swinging in a cold winter wind. A single tear trickled down her rounded cheek.

Mrs. Wakeman tugged at the collar of her black turtleneck. "Umm … isn't it?"

* * *

Jenny slumped forward onto the desk and twisted her face towards the window, staring at the steady patter of raindrops falling from a featureless, slate-gray sky. The bright yellow school buses, now emptied of their passengers, splashed away from the curb and idled roughly at the intersection, belching clouds of diesel while they waited for commuters to let them make left-hand turns. She heard the _clomp_ of boots behind her as the classroom slowly filled up with rain-soaked teenagers, still shaking water from their jackets and their umbrellas, mumbling their typical chorus of Monday morning woe. Jenny quietly watched them slide into their respective desks and effortlessly self-assemble into the usual cliques, chatting excitedly amongst themselves as they pulled out their textbooks and prepared for class.

Just another normal, dismal Monday morning.

But Jenny couldn't help but let her mind drift this morning. As she watched the familiar faces take their seats – the familiar pink, fleshy faces – her imagination algorithms activated, and she wondered what it would have been like to come in on a Monday morning and sit down in a room full of robots. Cute robot guys with chrome-plated smiles and shiny servos, robot girls to gossip with and study with … and hang out at the mall with, shopping for new antennas …

_It would have been awesome_, she thought to herself, as she pulled her textbook out of her backpack. She deployed a sharpener from her hand, and started getting her pencils ready for class. _It would have been really awesome …_

"Hey Jen, _you_ sure got in here early today." A stack of notebooks dropped on the desk to her left with a melodramatic _thud_, and she turned to see Brad's smirking face, with his trademark coppery spiked hair drooping over his forehead like overcooked spaghetti. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed him walk in the room; how he was able to manufacture a smile on a morning like this was beyond her ability to calculate. But as always, her best friend was a welcome relief from the isolation imposed upon her by the collective neglect of the _group_. He grabbed a fistful of pencils from his own desk, and borrowed her sharpener, knowing that she wouldn't mind. "Any particular reason? Or are you just that eager to get back to the noble pursuit of education?"

Normally a stupid wise-crack would be good for at least a giggle out of her, or at least an eye-roll. Not today. "Sometimes when it rains hard like this, I get in early so I can polish the water off and spray on some Rust-Away … and, y'know, I'd just as soon not have anyone watching me do it."

Brad frowned in sympathy, knowing what she meant by that innocent comment. It was just one more little routine that reminded Jenny of just how different she was from everyone else. And it really seemed to be weighing heavily on her today. He instantly realized that his usual repertoire of cheer-her-up goofy jokes wasn't going to be appropriate this dreary morning. Yesterday, she had been more depressed than he could ever remember seeing her, and she didn't seem much better now.

"I caught the news on TV this morning before I headed out," he said, in a more serious tone. "They were talking to a bunch of big-shot military guys over at the park where we landed. They say that between the ship we brought back, and spilling the beans about Vexus' big invasion plans, we might have saved the planet Earth! And they were interviewing some of the slaves that came back with us, and they were all talking about how happy they were to be home. Jenny, you're a _hero_."

"Sure," she squeaked, trying to smile. "That's pretty much what my _job_ is."

"… And they were saying that the invasion probably wouldn't _happen_ now, since the Cluster's main military base got wiped out by nanobots …"

Brad stopped himself, and swallowed hard, glancing at the single empty desk in the back row.

"Has anyone seen him yet this morning?"

Jenny's shoulders sagged, and she shook her head with a pained _whirr_. "I tried to call him a dozen times yesterday, but he wouldn't answer. His parents said that he hasn't left his bedroom. Brad, I … I think he blames himself for …"

Her voice drifted off, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence. Brad place a consoling hand on her shoulder, and tried to look her in the eyes. "Look, we don't know what happened to Allison. Maybe she survived. Maybe she's all right, somehow …"

"She sacrificed herself, Brad," said Jenny, on the verge of tears. "She finally had the chance to live a life of freedom, and do anything she wanted to do instead of taking orders from the Cluster. And she gave it all up … so that we could get back home and be free _ourselves_." Jenny closed her eyes reverently, remembering her first robot girl-friend. "She's more of a hero than I'll ever be."

"Jen … I don't know what to say." Brad slid his hand down to her arm, feeling stupid that he couldn't conjure up the right words to make Jenny feel better. Maybe she just needed someone to feel lousy with right now. Some things just couldn't be fixed with words, apparently.

"And the worst of it is, I'm not sure if anyone even knows what Allison _did_ for them."

A feminine voice coughed to get their attention.

"Um … maybe I could help do something about that."

Jenny and Brad looked up to see a blonde girl turned around in the seat in front of them, and recognized that it was Chloe, the attractive freshman who had been trying to gain Brad's interest over the past few weeks. Jenny was well aware of her efforts to go to the prom with Brad – heck, most of the girls in the school were aware – and a brief flash of anger flared in her processors, mixed with something that might have been jealousy. But before she had a chance to say anything harsh, she noticed something odd about Chloe's demeanor; her posture, her downcast eyes, the way she was nervously fidgeting with her hands. Her usual vapid indifference was gone; now she had the appearance of a criminal hoping for leniency before her judge and jury. If she'd had a tail, it would have been tucked between her legs.

Jenny was even more surprised by the venom in Brad's words. "_Yeah,_ right – what do you care about a robot, anyway? After all, it's not like they have any real _feelings_, right?"

Chloe winced from the verbal blow, and Jenny was surprised to see a flash of _shame_ on the face of the popular girl. She wondered if she should actually apologize for Brad's remark … but Chloe raised her hand, and continued in an apologetic voice.

"I guess I deserved that," she gulped. "Jenny, I … I've said a lot of junk over the past week … that kinda seems pretty stupid now." She took a deep breath to steady herself, and went on. "Look, umm … everything got a little crazy on Saturday after we got back home, and I never really got a chance to say thank you for saving our lives. If it wasn't for you and your robot friends, we'd still be collared up in that … that horrible _factory_." Chloe shivered at the mention of the Cluster slave labor factory, and subconsciously rubbed her neck, remembering the feel of cold steel against her skin.

"You're welcome," said Jenny, taking hold of Chloe's hand. She could tell that the girl was feeling awkward and nervous … and more amazingly, she seemed to be _sincere_.

Chloe seemed to zone out for a moment. "I'm sorry, just thinking about that planet … I never imagined a place so horrible could exist."

"It wasn't _all_ horrible," Jenny sighed.

The blonde arched a confused eyebrow, giving Brad a chance to jump back into the conversation. "That city was filled with _zillions_ of robot girls and guys, Chloe. Imagine Tremorton filled robots like Jenny – then multiply it by a thousand. And there were parades and dances and festivals and beauty salons, and tons of incredible, amazingly cool stuff – all just for robots."

"Wow," gulped Chloe. "I guess that's what the Cluster is supposed to be – some kind of paradise for robots, right? Just like that robot queen Vexus said? I'm … I'm surprised you didn't stay there."

A faint smile came to Jenny's face. "I'd be lying if I said that the thought hadn't crossed my circuits. And it was awfully cool to be around other robots for a change. But even if I had wanted to stay on Cluster Prime, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do. I could never be happy knowing that humans had to suffer so that I could live in paradise. After all, protecting humans is what I was built for."

"But the _other_ robot girl wasn't built to protect humans," said Chloe. "Why … why did she help us?"

Jenny felt a shudder run through her wiring, and she fought to hold herself together. "Allison finally learned the truth about the Cluster … she found out the truth about her home, and about humans, and about the queen. She learned that Vexus wants to enslave every being in the galaxy, whether its brain is made of soft tissue, or silicon. And she decided that was _wrong_. She said … it was the first real decision she had ever made in her life." Jenny closed her eyes, and remembered the look of pride on her friend's face as she had said those words.

"Maybe you could tell me some more about 'Allison' … at lunch."

Jenny titled her head in surprise, and Chloe explained. "Jenny, I write for the school paper, and a bunch of us were talking on the phone yesterday. We thought it might be a good idea to do a story on how our class escaped … and everyone knows about how you fought off a thousand spaceships, and how we were all carried around inside the belly of a giant silver android. But everyone's curious about the third robot that saved us. Every robot we saw on Cluster Prime was ugly and evil, and treated us horribly. Then along comes this 'Allison', and all of the sudden she's standing up to the evil robot queen and helping us escape! Even though it meant …" She dropped her head, overwhelmed by the magnitude of Allison's sacrifice. "Anyway … I was wondering if you could tell me some more about her? I'd … I'd really like to _know_ more about her."

It was a small thing, but it filled Jenny with the first glow of joy she'd felt in days. Allison had said that she finally had a chance to do something important with her life. And she was more right than she would ever know. Because of her selfless act, dozens of kids at Tremorton High – and no doubt, thousands of freed human slaves and their families – had a very different opinion about robots now. It would take some time for the story to spread, friend to friend, brother to brother, parent to child. It would take some time, but maybe people would come to appreciate what a simple robot girl had done, when she finally had a chance to make her own choice. After the Omni-droid attack last week, a wave of poison had spread over the Earth virtually overnight, painting all robots in a monstrous light. This could be a big step towards repairing the damage. This could be a step towards the day when robots and humans could live together in peace, laughing and hootin' it up …

"A story in the paper sounds great," Jenny said with a big smile. "And I think Allison would have really liked it too. But there's really one more robot you should talk to …"

She glanced behind her, and saw that the desk was still empty.

"… although I don't think you'll get a chance today," she frowned.

Their attention was diverted to the front of the room, as the rotund form of Mr. Snitzenburg waddled in, wiping his eyeglasses with his tie. A dozen hushed conversations began to break apart as the students abandoned all hope for a cancelled class, and turned around to prepare for another exciting journey into the world of geometric proofs. "I'm sorry for the delay," said the teacher, fighting with the sleeves of his overcoat, "but in this town, the intelligence of the drivers seems to be inversely proportional to the rainfall measurement. Heh, heh … inversely proportional … see, that's a little math humor."

Jenny, and the twenty-eight other students, collectively rolled their eyes. _Yeesh._ Things were definitely getting back to normal.

"Pull out your textbooks, and turn to the beginning of Chapter Thirty-one, people," he said, as he shook the moisture from his briefcase. "We've already a lot of class time, and we need to get ourselves back on track!" He bunched up his overcoat, and closed the classroom door to hang it on the hook …

When a hand slapped around the edge of the door, holding it open.

A silver-green, metallic hand.

The door creaked open, and an audible gasp washed over the room. Drew slowly staggered into the class with his backpack, looking like a walking silver scarecrow. He turned a haggard face up to the teacher, his striped metal hair hanging off the sides of his face like wild tree moss … but eerily, said nothing at all.

The geometry teacher seemed a bit startled, but quickly waved him to his seat. "Glad you could join us, Mr. Nabholtz. Get to your desk, please, class is starting."

As long as Jenny and Brad had known him, they had _never_ seen Drew look as horrible as he did right now. His silvery surface tone was gone, replaced by a mottled mixture of drab grays; the shininess was replaced with a cracked texture that made him look as if he were made of old brittle chalk. His electric green stripes were a dull, dirty olive, as if streaks of mold were growing along his body. A trail of moist gray dust flaked off behind him as he slushed towards the back of the class, seeming to shrink smaller and smaller with every step he took. His sunken eyes were fixed on a point in space six inches in front of his feet; he made eye contact with nobody, as if the effort of returning a simple greeting would shatter him like a stained glass window. Finally, with a sickly gurgle, he crawled behind his desk with the enthusiasm of a man climbing into an electric chair.

Nobody said a word as the class got underway, but most of the kids were staring at Drew, half-expecting to see him dissolve into a metallic puddle and flow away. As Chloe had said, the kids had been talking, and they could only imagine what was going through those nano-computers right now …

"Drew! Psst! Drew!" Brad waved frantically at him, hissing in a loud whisper. "Chapter Thirty-one. Hey man … are you all right?"

Drew creaked his head upwards and glanced at Jenny and Brad through a curtain of pale green hair, but there was no sadness in his face. In fact, there wasn't a trace of any emotion at _all_ in his face. He looked like a wooden automaton, like a someone whose soul had been sucked from his body and left in the ditch to die. He gave them a weak, silent, unconvincing nod, and then heaved his backpack onto his desk, fishing for his geometry textbook …

And as he slid his books out, there was a glint of something metallic. A small, round object came out of his backpack and fell to the floor with a sharp _clank_, then started to roll away …

It bumped against Chloe's foot, and she reached down to pick up … a thin metallic disk, about the size of a large coaster, with a smooth, mirrored surface.

"Hey, cool," she said, running her fingers over the polished metal. "What's this thing do?"

A few curious heads turned, and Drew lifted his eyes to the object in Chloe's hand … and gasped in horror. He lunged forward in a panic, desperate to stop Chloe before …

Suddenly the metallic disk glowed with a faint white light … and to Chloe's amazement, a bright image leapt out of the mirrored surface, a moving picture complete with sound. The picture flickered briefly, but the sounds of music and laughter were already discernable in the background. Everyone in the classroom stopped to gaze upon the tiny wonder Chloe held in her hands. And a moment later, the wavy image resolved itself into an excellent hologram of two teenage robots. A silver-green boy, and a lavender-and-white girl. It was the holo-disk that Drew and Allison had made together at the photo booth, back at Festival Square, only three short days ago.

Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth upon seeing Allison again, even as a hologram. Drew and Allison were laughing and giggling and acting like fools, jostling for position in front of the holo-camera. Drew looked like his normal silver-green self … no, he looked better than that. His face beamed with a smile like the noonday sun. "So what are we supposed to do in here?" he laughed, mugging for the camera.

"It's a photo booth, dummy," laughed Allison, poking Drew in the ribs. "See, that little thing right there is called a _ca-me-ra_. It's all very technical! Now hold still, the booth is going to shrink us so our picture will fit on the memory disk. If you're not a good boy, then you stay shrunk."

And they joked back and forth with increasingly terrible groaners, laughing and poking and shooting electric glances into each other's eyes. Then they decided to see who could make the other blush the worst. An embarrassing exchange of double-entendres flew back and forth, and Drew seemed to have the upper hand, as Allison's face glowed a brilliant violet. Then she surprised him by flinging her arms around his chest and pinching a blob of nanobots, causing his face to flash a near-solid green from the neck up. Delighted in her victory, she flung her arms into the air, and he laughed in mock protest, shouting that she was a big, cute cheater …

"Mr. Nabholtz," said the teacher. "Mr. Nabholtz? Please turn that off. It's time for class."

Drew's arm groaned and stretched out to take the silly momento from Chloe's hand, and brought it back to his own desk. He held it in his grey, ashen palms, and stared down at the image of two young robots in love, laughing without a care in the world. The sound of Allison's voice echoed through his memory banks like a beautiful song, and already she seemed like something that happened years ago, like something from a wonderful dream. With a little pressure from his fingers he paused the image, and the sound was muted, leaving a perfect 3-D picture of the most beautiful girl in the universe, with her arms wrapped around the luckiest guy in the universe. Her violet hair-foil flew wildly behind her face, and her deep, warm eyes seemed to stare right through him, even now …

He raised a finger to the robot girl's cheek, wishing her could speak to her, wishing that he could hold her in his arms just one more time … but the finger passed right through the image, as if it were painted on a dissolving fog. She seemed so real, hanging right in front of his eyes. She seemed real … but she was only a beautiful ghost.

Drew cradled the holo-disk in his hands and closed his eyes, looking like he might dissolve into powdery gravel, and pressed another spot on the bottom of the metallic circle. The image dissolved into a flurry of forgotten light, and he spoke with a low, trembling voice …

"Good-bye, Ally."

The students slowly turned their attentions back to the front of the room. Soon the only sound in the classroom was the shuffling of textbooks, the scratching of chalk, the beat of raindrops against the windowpanes – and the sound of synthesized teardrops streaming down a gray, chalky face, spattering into the pages of a geometry text.

* * *

THE END of Part Two

Three Days to Cluster Dawn

* * *


End file.
